10 Financial Must-Dos To Prepare For a New Baby - Classy Career Girl

10 Financial Must-Dos To Prepare For a New Baby When you’re having a new baby, there’s so much excitement  and things to do to prepare. You’ll be getting the nursery ready, preparing for the birth, homecoming, and babyproofing your home. There’s also things you should do to prepare financially. 10 Financial Must-Dos To Prepare For a New Baby 1. Check your Health Insurance Giving birth is expensive, and your health insurance probably won’t cover the full cost. There’s probably going to be a discrepancy between the medical bills and your insurance coverage. You should check with your provider as early into your pregnancy as possible to estimate what your bills will be. Once you have the estimation, you can allocate a portion of money each month to go towards the medical bill. You can also get quotes for adding the baby to your health care policy. 2. Make a Budget Baby shopping is a lot of fun, but it can be easy to get caught up in buying everything that was ever created for a baby, even if you won’t use it. You need to make a realistic budget for baby items and stick to it. Shopping at an online baby store can help you stick to your budget. You will need to put much more thought into what you’re buying, and you can keep your budget by your side as you shop. 3. Emergency Funds You might not have given any thought to savings and emergency funds, but once you’re a parent, this becomes much more important. You should budget in for savings so that you’re prepared in case there is an emergency. This could help if you or your partner decides to be a stay at home parent, then you have a safety net, or if there’s an emergency, like home repairs, you will have your emergency fund to pay for it. 4. Life Insurance, Disability Insurance, and Wills You should take out a life insurance policy. A good calculation for this is five times your earnings, plus any household debt and college tuition fees. Stay at home parents should take out a life insurance policy as well. You should also check any employer-sponsored disability insurance as you may want to supplement this. And you should make a will. While you might not want to consider these things, you should make sure that should anything happen, you have made your wishes very clear. 5. Save for your Retirement You should save for your retirement. You will be able to fund other expenses like college through loans, or scholarships, but you can’t do this for your retirement. Stay at home parents should also look for an IRA that will allow you to save tax-free. 6. Start Saving For College College is expensive, and while you should be adding to your retirement fund, you should also start saving for your child to go to college. Look for Educational accounts that will have tax advantages, but they may come which certain conditions, such as the funds can only be used for educational purposes. 7. Order a Birth Certificate and Social Security You should order the birth certificate and social security number for your child as soon as possible. Staff in the hospital will usually have the paperwork for this, but if they haven’t you should contact the Social Security office and the office of vital records in your state. You will need this information to open savings accounts for your child. [RELATED:  How Stay-At-Home Moms Can Bounce Back to an Office Job] 8. Childcare Finding the right childcare for your child can take some time, and there are a few options. You might prefer a daycare or a nanny. Whichever option you choose, you will need to make sure that it is within your budget. You need to have a realistic estimation of how much you can afford to spend on childcare and find a childcare provider within your budget. 9. Debt If you have any outstanding debt, you should take steps to clear it. It can mean that you will have a financial clean slate. If you are struggling to clear your debt, seek some advice from a debt advice specialist. 10. Open a Savings Account for your Child You should open a savings account for your baby. Look for one that has no fees  and no balance minimums. You could link it to your checking account so you can watch your child’s savings grow, and automatically transfer funds into it. These savings don’t have the same conditions as some of the educational accounts, so your child could use these funds for whatever he or she chooses. It can seem like you have a lifetime to prepare for your financial future, and that of your child, but time passes quicker than you realize. If you take these steps now, you can be reassured about the financial future of your family.