As you may know, I am the bread winner of our family while Jacob finishes his last year of college. Being pregnant has added a huge mound of stress to my life in that regard, as now I'm responsible for paying all of our bills, making sure we'rd fed, paying doctor's bills, and somehow saving enough money to actually have this baby. The scariest part is not knowing what will happen once Little Booger is here. I (obviously) will not be able to work for a few weeks, and my job not only does not provide any sort of pay for maternity leave besides whatever vacation time you have built up, but my vacation time will drop back down to 20 hours on December 31st. That means I won't even have a full paid week for maternity leave.
Every time I think about it, it scares me senseless. We won't be able to afford childcare, which is a moot point because from the hours of research I've done, no daycare or nanny in the area will accept a child under 3 months old. Jacob will be student teaching and working on the weekends at that point, so it isn't like I can ask him to stay home with the baby while I work. I would have to find an evenings only job, and even then I don't know that he would be able to do it. Not because I doubt his ability as a father, but how could I ask him to pile watching a newborn on his own to his already busy schedule of student teaching, classes, and working part time?
Every extra penny we have (which is admittedly next to none) goes into savings. When you live off of $20,000 a year with a mortgage, a car payment, doctor's bills, groceries, electricity, water, trash, etc. -- there's not anything left over. In fact, we're lucky if we have $80 left over to put into savings at the end of the month. I make $100 stretch to feed us for a whole month.And somehow I have to earn enough extra in the next four and a half months to cover at least three months of bills.
I had thought about taking the voluntary furlough at work, which would put me on "maternity leave" from December to March, and then taking my actual maternity leave when that ended, however the stipend that furloughed workers receive would no where near cover the bills. I have been in a state of near panic for months now.
We recently decided that in order to cut our electric bill in the winter (which would be upwards of $200 due to the old heating in our house) we would purchase a pellet stove. We knew we had a limit of about $500, as the money to pay for the stove would be coming out of our very minimal savings. We looked for a month, and the cheapest we could find was $1200. As soon as we gave up, we found one for $400. I was still immensely stressed out about it -- that's almost half our bills for a month! -- but we bought it. I then realized when I was taking care of bills that we had reached our "extra" pay period, and I had $400 set aside that I didn't need.
Yesterday, it hit me that when we switched insurance agencies for our homeowner's insurance that Jacob never said how much our monthly payment was. He told me it was a once yearly payment, due in December. I hadn't been setting money aside for it, as I thought it was withdrawn monthly like our car insurance. The panic that sets in when you realize that there's a $1200 payment looming a few months away that you hadn't been budgeting for is horrifying.
What should happen but we receive a check in the mail from our old insurance company for $1400. We don't have to set aside the homeowner's insurance money anymore.
God has shown time and time again that He will provide. It's just taking me a really long time to trust that.
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