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Owen videos for non FBers

How much do kids cost?

The blog isn't dead. Not yet anyway. I had the goal at the beginning of November to do a post every other day--30 posts by the end of the year. Utter FAIL. But let's look ahead, not in the past.

Last year, one of my unpublished posts was about our 2007 spending report and how drastically it would change with the arrival of LBA, and where would that money come from--$10,000 as an estimate. This was based largely on the reported cost of raising a child to age 18--$250,000. The Simple Dollar covered this topic recently, and made many good points about how tax benefits and change in lifestyle habits are cover a lot of that cost. To some extent, it's shifting money around, but the point is that you don't have to come up with an extra $250,000 to raise a child. Thankfully.

But let's look at some real numbers--our comparison of 2007 to 2008. The net earnings are within a couple hundred dollars of each other--any raises received balanced out the lost income from Joanne's short-term "disability".



My exactness in accounting doesn't really say how close we came to the $10,000 estimate. Muddying the issue is whether to include 529 contributions as a child expense or savings. Including it as an expense means, at minimum, Owen accounts for 10% of our budget (a chunk of the merchandise line is attributable to him, as there were a lot of charges at Target and other places). THe other way to look at it is we redirected our mortgage overpayments to Owen's 529--it's almost an exact match. (Digression #1, I took a look at my retirement savings calculator and adjusted for the market collapse. Assuming my other assumptions are OK, it means we have to work to 61 instead of 60. So that's not super horrible).

And to be fair, we don't incur the biggest cost of infant/toddlers--daycare. At least not yet. So that's quite the boon to the savings line. And I'm shocked by the large difference there. One of the reasons I don't see it is because of how we have our savings structured (equities in taxable accounts; fixed income in sheltered), so that took a hit, and we already funded our 2009 Roths. That gives me some optimism in our 2009 budget that when Owen does finally start daycare, we have the resources available to not have to scrimp too much (although a place over $900/month would more than eat up the savings), and we maybe able to continue fully funding our 401k's. That one perhaps a little more questionable, though, as I'm reassessing if we need to direct that much there, and I wouldn't mind having a little more liquidity. Just in case.

We did skip major purchases in 2008, which probably won't repeat this year--we're already considering getting a new refrigerator (digression #2: A Maytag side-by-side is heavily discounted at Home Depot as an internet special. At an appliance store I visited today, I asked the salesperson what I get for spending $1200 versus $800 on a fridge. His answer: features. Not quality. "It's all the same box". Illuminating!). I/we may also be a little more active in home projects and what not. And I might get a hankering for Blu-ray (probably not).

So, yay!, Owen hasn't broken the bank.

Yet.

Small Wonder

Last week, a co-worker, Steve, gave me the RCA Small Wonder, a mini camcorder. We've played around with it for the past week. We missed some things like Owen taking some steps while holding onto a walker toy he has, and climbing up the stairs. But we did manage to get more laughter tonight. That's the best, anyway, right?



Odd things will make Owen laugh. Tonight it was me smacking myself in the head. Hopefully he won't become desensitized to it and I won't have to ratchet up the self abuse to continue to amuse him.

Red Rock Country

Owen, Grandma Kozlik and I made Owen's first trip up to Sedona this past week. The reason for the trip was three-fold: to use up vacation time (I can only carry over 20 hours into the new year), to get Owen out of town for a mini adventure, and to play around with the camera outdoors. Originally Keith was going to go instead of Grandma, but Keith had something pop up at work. We couldn't change the date because we reserved a night at my parent's time share.

I will never tire of Sedona. Even though I've been there over a dozen times, the scenery still amazes me. Which made it easy for me to have fun playing with the camera. I took ~120 pictures, although many of them were of the same scene, I just changed the settings to see what effect it would have. We started off at Bell Rock. We tried to find the trail that went around Bell Rock (and not around Courthouse since we didn't have time), but apparently it doesn't exist. We took BR "Pathway" to BR "Trail", then went back the way we came.

Then we headed to Red Rock State Park, which now costs $8 to go to. I'm not sure we got our money's worth due to the time we spent there and our lack of desire to do much hiking, but the view of Cathedral Rock is pretty spectacular. I was surprised at how good the fall colors were - we saw some very bright gold trees. Based on our hike a couple of weeks ago at Seven Springs I would have thought all the leaves would be off the trees.

Even though we didn't have the correct connector piece for it, I brought our tripod anyway, so I wanted to catch some good sunset and twilight pictures. Our plan was to go up to the Airport lookout, which has some beautiful views. Unfortunately we missed the actual sunset, but I was able to play around with some twilight pictures using the tripod (I just sat the camera on the tripod and used the timer function). Didn't catch anything spectacular, but it was neat to see how things turned out in that light. We now have the right connector piece, so I'm looking forward to playing around with it more.

As I mentioned earlier, we stayed at my parent's time share, which is just outside of Sedona. After unloading everything (it's amazing how much stuff we had for one night!), we had a quick McDonald's dinner (my first time having McD's probably since college), and put Owen to bed. I took a nice soak in the jacuzzi tub, watched the end of The Christmas Story, and went happily to bed.

The next morning we went up to the Catholic church, which is up on a hill with some great views. It has to be the most beautiful church I've been to, at least in the States. The plan was then to do some shopping at the Sedona Outlet mall, but Owen fell asleep right before we got there, so we decided to keep driving and go to the Anthem Outlets.

Then it was back home to check out the pics!

Ultimate Owen

Owen started creeping (moving forward on his stomach) about a week ago. Boy, does he learn fast - he was all over the place today! We now have to be careful about anything we put within reach anywhere we put him down.

Owen rolled over to Daddy's Ultimate bag earlier today. I was worried he might grab the suntan lotion out of the side pocket, so I watched him closely. Instead of grabbing the lotion, he pulled out the two discs that were in the bag. Go Owen! They were old dirty ones, so I took them away from him and instead gave him one from on the wall. He played with it for about 10 minutes.

Later in the day, I set him on the ground. He creeped past the toys that were in front of him, and picked up the frisbee!

Looks like we have a future Ultimate player on our hands!!

And if today is any indication, he'll be fast and hard to catch. ;-)

More laughs with dad

I'm not quite sure what it is about me, but Owen thinks I'm hilarious.



Well, until lift off.

Memo to self: laughter before lift off does not lead to its continuation, but no laughter then lift off causes it to start.

Owen's First Halloween

Other than the helmet, it's been a while since we've done an update on Owen. So here goes!

On the subject of the helmet, he seems to mostly be used to it. He bats at his head every once in a while, but he seems to notice it more when it's off, than when it's on. For Halloween we decorated it as a NY Giants football helmet, complete with NY logo and his number 3 (for his birthday).

Owen's first tooth broke through the day before his 7 month birthday. The second one followed a few days later (both on the bottom). His third one, this time on the top, broke through today, one day before is 8 month birthday. He hasn't complained too much about them. When he does, the Orajel or a cold teether usually calms him down. Now we have to figure out how to fit in brushing his teeth into his schedule.

Owen had his first solid food (rice cereal) at the end of July. He had various cereals once a day for a few months until it was obvious that he got the hang of it and needed some more sustenance (he woke up consistently at 4:30am hungry). Since then he's had carrots, peas, pears, and sweet potatoes, his favorite so far, and eats solid food 3 times a day.

Owen has been sitting up on his own now for about 2 months. He can't crawl yet, but he can scoot himself backwards and has the turn-around-on-his-tummy thing down pat. He squirms around more when he sits in my lap, such that I have to be careful not to drop him.

He only now is starting to complain if we take things away from him, which I'm sure means more trouble is ahead. His favorite toys are ones that he can put in his mouth and/or make music/light up. He's getting away from the larger toys (swing, rocker, seat), but I'm guessing that will change once Christmas comes around.

On that note, I'm thinking that the large Christmas tree will stay in the garage this year and we'll get a table top one. That's kind of a bummer to me, but will also be less work. But it should be exciting to share the season with Owen.

We successfully moved him from 3 hour to 4 hour feeding schedule, which turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be. The Hog said that would help him nap longer during the day (not to mention one less feeding is easier on me). We've had minimal success with that. Most of his naps are still only 30-45 minutes long, 3 times a day, but he has started to take some longer naps and appears to be almost ready to move to 2 naps a day.

Overall he's still a pretty mellow fellow. Keith had a work dinner at Olive and Ivy in Scottsdale, and we decided to take him along. It probably wasn't the best idea (inappropriate for the circumstances), but he behaved beautifully and was a good topic of conversation since we didn't know most of the people at the table.

Well, another weekend gone without getting much done around the house. We were pretty lazy before Owen arrived, and having him as an excuse just makes it more difficult. It's really hard not to choose Owen over housework - but really, what's more important?

I might just be a moron

As I go through life, I continue to find more evidence that I am simply not as smart as I think I am. Or, at least not as smart as I used to be. The latest example:

This post was going to have a more benign title of something like "benefits enrollment" since I didn't really have anything more creative to use in an analysis of our employer healthcare options. But I'll go ahead and do that post before getting my possible idiocy.

Actually, I'm not sure that's possible, since the premise of that analysis is based entirely on the aforementioned lack of intelligence.

This is the deal: We've always used Joanne's health coverage from Motorola/Freescale rather than what I could get from ASU. This was largely based on the direct cost of the plan to us--the monthly premium was cheaper on her plan for the two of us, than it was for each of us individually on our own plans. Or at least that's what I recall to be the case.

We sat down tonight to explore shifting from a no deductible/no copay coverage to a high deductible/small copay coverage, or something in the middle. This is the pricing of Freescale's options (this isn't quite comprehensive--I deleted options I knew we wouldn't consider):


Last year we had essentially the max coverage. I considered for a brief time reducing that, but in the calculation tools, child birth made it a moot point. I also pondered shifting it after Owen was born as I though the middle deductible plan was a sweet spot, but wasn't sure how a new deductible would work, so I stuck with the plan (0 deductible/90%/no copays), with the intention of doing a better analysis for 2009, which would be made easier with better knowledge/expectations of the medical needs of a child.

So I tested various expected service needs: primary visits, specialist visits, immunizations, lab work, general checkups, ER visits, out patient surgery, the Hale family plan, etc. In most scenarios, the high deductible plan was the winner. When it lost, it was because of extended stay hospital visits, but even then it wasn't that much. The main reason was because with the copay option, that covered all general office visits, so the deductible did not apply. But with a 0 deductible/no copay option, it goes straight to coinsurance, which isn't always cheaper than the copay.

We settled on the $1500 deductible/80% coinsurance/$10-$50 copay plan since it seemed to offer the highest liklihood of being the cheapest, not only for monthly deductions ($15/month!) but for overall annual medical expenses. In most of the models we tested, we never did max out the deductible, since so much ended up being covered by the copay. We also found that the lower coinsurance was likely to be better, since we'd have to have nearly $4000 in bills beyond the deductible to have it cost more. Admittedly, that is certainly possible--one extended stay in the hospital would be enough. But much like our other insurance policies, we can afford a certain amount of risk because we have the resources to self insure to an extent. The likelihood is that we are more likely to save $300 than spend an extra $500, and if the latter happens, well, we can deal with that.

After we got the medical portion done, we started looking at vision and dental and whether it was time to add Owen to both. That's when I got out my ASU benefits booklet for a point of comparison to the family costs of Freescale's vision/dental benefits. I then looked at the costs of the medical coverage. Or more specifically the coverages of the available plans.

ASU/State of Arizona offers an HMO plan, 2 EPO plans and a PPO plan. The PPO plan is a lot more than Freescale's (also a PPO) best coverage. The HMO is 30% more. The EPO plans are about the same. But the coverages! Everything is covered! There's a small copay ($10-20), but outside of that, nada!

No deductible, no coinsurance, no nothing.

I'm looking at it and thinking to myself "wait, this isn't what I remember". I recall the plan all costing significantly more than Freescale's options. In that regard, the PPO held true, but the EPO? That seems like a good deal at $150/month for a family, with a token amount out of pocket on top of that. The only thing I can think of is that I rejected the EPO option long ago because there is no out-of-network benefit. But don't you think it would have been smart to look into the extensiveness of the network? Or way the liklihood of needing to go outside of the network? I did a brief search this evening and our pediatrician, Joanne's OB/GYN and Banner Desert and Chandler Regional are all in network.

As the subject says, I might just be a moron.

The only other point in my defense is that ASU's enrollment period is 6 weeks before Freescale's, so a direct comarison isn't possible. But you'd think with 4 years of practice/having to make these elections, I would have noticed that ASU's benefits deserved much more scrutiny than I ever game them.

On a tangetial point: If we had family coverage through ASU, that would be an $1100/month benefit Im not receving. Just at the individual level, it is $461/month. It'd be nice if there was some way to get that $5000-$13,00 that ASU/State of Arizona is willing to spend on me to, you know, just give it to me.