Wow, it has been quite a while since I've updated. I find when I stray from this site my spending goes up and my motivation goes down. Slowly but surely I’m getting back on track.

Let’s start with an update: our only debt is our mortgage (a whopping 202K) and DH’s student loans for his MBA (around 12K). We have our emergency fund established and need to focus on paying down debt, saving for our kids’ college and our retirement.

We’ve only saved about $1500 for my almost 3 year old. We’re just deciding exactly how we want to invest it. With another child due in November, it’s going to be tough to put away any amount of money for both but we’re going to try!

I’m going to take 4 months of maternity leave so I’ve been trying to estimate how much we’ll need for that. We always have the E fund to fall back on but I’d like to save that for a true emergency – not something we know about and can plan for. I think we decided we need around 8K. 4 months of mortgage payments ($6K), $1K for car ins due in December and $1K for Christmas. Everything else we should be able to cover with DH’s paycheck (he makes considerably less than I do). Of course when I go back to work we will have additional childcare expenses. Sigh, it’s neverending!

Some portion of the $8K needed for my maternity leave will be covered with s/t disability. I’m not exactly sure how much this is going to be. I should get 70% of my salary for 6 weeks. But, there is a 10 day waiting period so really that is only 70% of 4 weeks pay. So somewhere around $3000 - $3500. That leaves around $5K. I have $1800 saved up in our savings acct and DH has about $3K in a money market acct. So we’re just about covered. I’d like to have a little cushion though (say $500-$1000) just in case his paycheck doesn’t quite cover everything. I think we should be ok when the time comes.

I’ve started back into couponing. I forget how addicting finding deals can be! It really turns into something of a hobby for me. I hope I can make it worthwhile!!

The next thing I want to do is create a personal financial statement . I’m scared to look at our 401K balances though. I fear we are way behind schedule. We are 35 and 37 years old and I think we only have about $100K total. We each put in 10% of our salaries, but that’s only been for about the past year or so.