If you have a baby on the way or are thinking of starting your family, financial preparation should be a top priority. While preparing for a baby, you’ll go through a few financial preparation stages. Protect your personal wealth by setting your family up for success before you’re sleep deprived and not thinking as clearly as you are right now.

Start Preparing for a Baby Earlybaby feet

If your household doesn’t follow a monthly financial plan, now is the time to change that. Set guidelines and determine where each dollar will be at the end of the month. Do you know the cost of baby planning? Having a baby adds too many new expenses to manage without already having a comfortable relationship with monthly financial planning.

Get to know your insurance plan

If your knowledge about your insurance plan starts and ends with how to find out if a doctor at the closest minute clinic is in your provider’s network, you’ve got some research to do.

It’s likely your insurance provider may not cover the full cost of prenatal doctor visits and labor and delivery costs. Find out how much will be covered and what you could be left paying out of pocket. In the monthly budget you’ll be making, start setting aside money specifically for paying the medical bills as quickly as possible.

Adjust your monthly budget

Your expenses are going to shift even before the baby arrives. Add the cost of decorating a nursery, purchasing necessary items like bottles and clothes, and those medical costs. Your budget will get even tighter once the baby is born, so expand the amount you allot to savings as much as you can.

Determine parental leave

Find out how much paid time you and your partner’s employers offer for parental leave. If you want to take more time off than you get paid for, calculate how long that will be possible with all of your household’s expenses.

Once parental leave ends, you’ll need child care. In some cases, paying for child care costs more than one parent earns. Being highly aware of your personal wealth will help you see that deficit immediately and begin making the decision of whether or not one parent wants to stay home with the baby instead of returning to work.

Don’t Let a Lack of Financial Preparation Take Away from the Excitement of Having a Baby

Meet with our advisors for a free consultation and gain the knowledge you’ll need to adjust to a new family member and build personal wealth throughout your child’s life. At Alpha Omega Wealth, our priority is to give you knowledge you can use and pass down to your children. Start learning before your little one arrives and that overwhelmed feeling you have will subside a bit.