O budgeting, how I despise thee.

Things we began giving up/changing as of Sept 1:

• cancelling monthly lawn care service
• decreasing cable bill by going from 200 channels (most of which we never watched anyway!) down to 50 channels and eliminating DVR (oh well) Edit: Apparently we get to keep the DVR because it comes free with the channel package! YAY!
• no more eating out 1-2x per week (now just once or twice a month)
• bye bye, Netflix (getting DVDs from the library instead… *sigh*)
• George will be working from home one day per week, saving some gas money (it’s 50 miles round-trip)
• I’m going to work one extra afternoon every week on the day when he’s home (since Oliver naps then anyway)

All these “little” things add up to a difference of about $400/month, so that will cover the freaking $400/month law school loan payments. Which means every time that check goes out, I will have to restrain myself from writing on the tiny “Memo” line: I STILL HATE YOU, LAW SCHOOL. HATE HATE HATE.

The problem is, we’ll be missing my income for a while after I have the baby next spring, and we need to start saving for that time period NOW. So my poor husband, who has only had his evenings and weekends back for a little over a month, is also looking for a second job—just 10 hrs/wk or so—to bring in some extra cash. I am very sad about this because he worked his BUTT off for four years, working full time while going to law school, and now he has to work two jobs. He can’t work as an attorney until he has officially passed the bar exam (results come out Oct 31) and has been sworn in (Nov 15, I think)—he can’t even get an interview until after that. But even then, we don’t know if he’ll make any more money as a new-grad lawyer than he does at his current job. It might very well be less. Sometimes he chuckles sadly, “Remind me: WHY did I want to do this, again?”

I told him I will find a better-paying job next fall (just evening or weekend hours, so George can watch the kids, because I can’t ask my mom to watch a 3-yr old AND a newborn!). And in 6 years, when our second child starts going to school all day, I’ll be able to work full time again. That’s when we’ll really be in good shape. We’ll not only be able to buy a nice house and take family vacations, we’ll be able to save for our kids’ college tuition AND our own retirement. Six more years, that’s all. We can scrimp and survive just six more years.

We’ll probably start getting the house ready after the holidays and put it up for sale in the spring. We have NO idea exactly how or when this will happen, considering the baby is due in April, so that’s what is stressing me out the most. Open Houses should be very interesting: “Here we have a lovely 3-bedroom, 1½-bathroom house with GREAT potential… just ignore all the toys on the floor and the dishes in the sink and the crazy lady passed out on the couch over there…”

There is a lot to be grateful for, though. We have a place to live, we have food to eat, we have jobs, we have good health insurance. We have each other, we have Oliver, and we have a new little life on the way. These are the things that matter; everything else will fall into place, eventually.

But dammit, I still miss my Netflix.