Season 3, Episode 9: "My Partner and I Want Kids in a Few Years. How Do We Financially Prepare for a Baby?"

Season 3, Episode 9: “My Partner and I Want Kids in a Few Years. How Do We Financially Prepare for a Baby?”

Dear readers, as you know, your humble Bitches are what’s known as “parenting experts.” We’ve spent literally decades observing and critically judging the childrearing of others. And we’ve done it all without sullying our hands by actually becoming parents ourselves! So when it comes to the topic of how to financially prepare for a baby… you know you can trust us.

Believe it or not, we childfree hags received more than one question about financially preparing for parenthood. And while we’ve answered questions about how to get ready to buy a house or go to college before… we’ve never touched this one’s diaper-rashy bottom.

But how hard can it be?

Having kids is one of the most financially significant decisions in a person’s life! Not only are kids expensive, but the decision affects people differently depending on their gender, sexuality, and access to medical care, childcare, and educational resources.

At the very least, you or your co-parent (if you have one) will need to maneuver into a job with solid health insurance benefits and parental leave. But the preparatory headache doesn’t stop there! So let’s dive into it, shall we?

Read More
Splurging on Kids: When It Works, and When It Doesn’t

Splurging on Kids: When It Works, and When It Doesn’t

Piggy and I have a general policy against giving childrearing advice.

It’s not because we don’t have opinions on the subject. Trust and believe: we have opinions on every subject. For example…

  • Opinions on land use in Paraguay? The Bitches say: Keep the grazing cattle in the Chaco region. Although we are Team Yerba Mate, everyone knows that the climate is just too arid—although better land management practices are needed to prevent desertification.
  • Thoughts on the performance of the current mayor of Fair Haven, Vermont? The Bitches say: We strongly approve of Lincoln, the Nubian goat. Eating the paperwork itself may be the best way to combat bureaucratic creep. Honestly, Lincoln the Goat 2020.
  • Was Paris wrong to give the Golden Apple of Discord to Aphrodite? The Bitches say: Absolutely! Athena clearly offered him wisdom because she could see he was sorely lacking in sense. Women are not prizes, Paris, so stop using your magical fruit like a fistful of arcade tickets you’re hot to trade in!

See? We’re a bottomless pit of opinions!

But because we don’t have children ourselves, we try to keep our big mouths shut on the subject. Especially when talking to actual-factual parents. We’ve lived the experience of mansplaining; we can only imagine that DINKsplaining is similarly annoying.

But today we wanted to explore an interesting topic for our readers who are becoming, thinking of becoming, or trying to become parents:

Think back to the times your parents “splurged” on you. In hindsight, you probably know which things you truly enjoyed, versus stuff you just put up with.

So which expenses were worth it? Which ones weren’t? If you could go back in time, what would you tell them to stop doing, or do more of?

Read More