Plugging Away At Our Goals

We had a prenatal visit today – everything’s still going really well with the pregnancy, and the days seem to be flying by.   We paid another $1000 to our midwife – we only owe her another $650, which we’re scheduled to pay in mid-April.   I remember when we were thinking about having a baby and we knew that the midwife’s fee would be $3000.   That’s a lot of money for us, and we knew we’d be paying ourselves, since health insurance doesn’t cover home birth expenses.   But by putting whatever we could into our HSA throughout 2007, and then really focusing on the HSA this year, we’ve had the money in the account each time we’ve had a payment due, and it hasn’t felt like a strain on the budget.  

I’ll be putting another $500 into the HSA tomorrow, which will bring our total contribution for 2008 to $3200.   That’s more than half way to the maximum allowable contribution, and we’re only two months into the year.   It’s still a strange feeling for us to be able to talk about maxxing out things like our HSA and IRAs.   During the years we were in debt, that was never a possibility for us – it was a stretch to put $200/month into our IRAs back then.   We did max out our HSA last year, but just barely – I think I made the final contribution after Christmas.   This year, it will be nice to have it done in the spring so that we can forget about it.

Having our financial goals laid out in black and white is very helpful for me.   I met some girlfriends on Saturday for a day of shopping and girl talk, and we had a great time.   I spent $15 on lunch, $8 on a gift for my husband, and 68 cents on a folder to hold our tax receipts from 2007 (it cost about  $6, but I had a gift card worth $5.20 that I got when we returned a Christmas gift we didn’t need).   I walked around with my friends for an entire day at a major outlet mall without buying anything.   It helps that we were in clothing stores all day and I’m almost seven months pregnant – so I couldn’t have tried anything on even if I had wanted to.   But I really didn’t want to.   I have a closet that is jammed with clothes, and I really don’t enjoy shopping for clothes unless I’m in a thrift store.   In a mall, all I can think about is how much money I would be wasting if I were to buy anything.    I was thinking instead about how good it would feel to make a $500 HSA deposit this week.   I got the best of both worlds – I was able to spend time with my friends  and still have money to put towards the goals that we’ve decided are priorities for the year.   And I’d much rather have a maxxed out HSA than a few new shirts.