Today is our three year wedding anniversary. Hard to believe that it was three years ago that we got married at that beautiful Japanese garden and had a blast with our reception and an awesome honeymoon trip to Italy. Now we've got Lucas with us and we can't really remember what life was like before he came along.
We celebrated this past Saturday evening with a dinner out at a nice sushi restaurant and watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (since I finished reading Deathly Hallows already and Lediya is almost finished). It was a nice, chill date night with grandma watching Lucas.
I've been playing around with a service called GrandCentral.com (recently acquired by Google) and so far it's pretty intriguing. Its motto, “One number for life,” pretty much says it all. At GrandCentral, you choose a new, single, unified phone number - you hand it out to everyone you know, instructing them to delete all your old numbers from their Rolodexes. From now on, whenever somebody dials your new uninumber, all of your phones ring simultaneously. No longer will anyone have to track you down by dialing each of your numbers in turn. No longer does it matter if you’re home, at work or on the road. Your new GrandCentral phone number will find you.
As a bonus, all messages now land in a single voice mail box. You can listen to them in any of three ways. First, you can dial in from any phone (a text message arrives on your cellphone to let you know when you have voice mail). You can also play your messages on the Web, at GrandCentral.com, and download them as audio files to preserve for posterity. You can even ask to be notified by e-mail; a link in the e-mail message takes you online to play the voice mail.
The service also has several neat features that, if you're not careful, can turn GrandCentral into a full-blown hobby. I am exploring this service as the first step in possibly cutting our traditional land line service, so stay tuned.
Finally, you may have noticed the new "Call Me" feature on this blog. If you click on that, GrandCentral will ask for your phone number, it will then call you, and then connect you to me - all for free. Neat, huh?
One of the larger costs with having a baby is health insurance coverage. We calculated the numbers across three different scenarios (insurance through my work, insurance through Lediya's work, and individual health insurance) and determined that purchasing an individual health insurance policy is the most cost effective for Lucas.
A popular comparison site for health insurance is eHealthInsurance. I like it because they list a lot of the major insurers like Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and you don't have to give them your name or other personal information before seeing the plan's specifics like monthly premium, deductible, and coinsurance percentage. They do require birth date and zip code. The quotes are usually for those in good health.
We found a Blue Cross plan through a broker that has a deductible of $3,500. It costs us just $78 per month versus the $300+ that we would have had to pay through our workplaces. True, we have to pay out of pocket until we reach the deductible, but we can offset that by claiming the costs against Lediya's healthcare pre-tax Flexible Spending Account (FSA). We look at health insurance as coverage against major catastotrophes, and we can easily afford the high deductibles. I myself have individual health insurance that costs $54 a month, enabling me to pocket most of the $900 monthly allowance that my workplace provides to purchase insurance through a cafeteria plan.
Now that we're almost 4 months into this baby business, we can impart some knowledge on ways to save on baby-associated costs. Every little bit counts!
Buy the Baby Bargains book to get the best deals on baby gear.
Sign-up for online baby clubs to obtain manufacturer coupons on baby stuff: MyPampers.com, Huggies Baby Network, Enfamil Family Beginnings, Similac Welcome Addition, etc. We've received $75 worth of coupons from Enfamil and Similac already (although Lucas only breastfeeds), as well as about $30 from Pampers and Huggies. We've also received tons of free diaper and wipe samples, formulas, a couple of diaper bags, etc.
Scour Sunday coupons for diapers and wipes and stack those coupons with Target coupons that come out about once every couple of months for maximum savings. Our average diaper cost to date is about 10 cents per diaper after using the Sunday coupon, plus the Target coupon and sale prices. Example: mega jumbo packs (88 each) are on sale at Target for 2 for $20. Use the $5 Target coupon and the $1 Sunday coupon to bring the price down to $14. So $14/166 diapers = 8 cents per diaper. Rinse, then repeat.
Costco is also a great source for cheap diapers and wipes, if you don't mind store brand. The Kirkland brand diapers are $29.99 for 234 (13 cents per diaper) and Kirkland brand wipes are $15.99 for 732 (2 cents per wipe).
Costco also sells sleepers and going-out clothes for cheap. We picked up a couple of Carter's sleepers for $5 each ($4 less than Babies R Us).
Sign-up for the Babies R Us mailing list - they send you a coupon book once a month that contains savings on diapers, accessories, furniture, etc.
Picked up Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final installment of the Harry Potter series, first thing this morning at Target for $17.99. Just started reading it and right away the tone is extremely dark, continuing from the seventh book in the series, Half-Blood Prince. It looks like it will be a fitting end to the story that Lediya and I started reading way back in 2001. I wonder what J.K. Rowling will be up to next?
On Sunday we went to Aidyn's 1st birthday. The theme was Elmo. There were lots of families and little kids. Lucas met Aidyn for the first time. He also got to hang out with his cousins Matthew and Aiden (not the birthday boy). He also got to meet Ryan and Ella. Mom and dad got to catch up with a few friends.
Last Saturday we attended the very beautiful wedding of Lediya's co-worker, Trang, at the Huntington Beach Hyatt. The decorations were amazing, and the details that Trang incorporated into the reception were incredible. We had auntie Pam watch Lucas for the evening, while mom and dad enjoyed the good food, the good company, and the dancing (but he got to attend the ceremony). Unfortunately, we weren't able to capture a photo of the couple, just the bride.
Congratulations Trang and Luong and welcome to the club!
If you want to invest in the stock market but feel that you don't have the time and patience to search out specific mutual funds or stocks to invest in, consider target retirement funds. Target retirement mutual funds are getting more and more popular, offering instant diversification into stocks and bonds, as well as automatically shift to a more conservative blend as you near your target retirement date. The great thing about these funds is that it can essentially be left on "autopilot" until retirement.
First, you choose the target date that you would like to retire, then pick the corresponding mutual fund. In our case, we picked the Vanguard Target Retirement 2045 fund (VTIVX). Of course, 2045 is 38 years from now, and we will be both 68 years old then. But the reason we picked that particular year is because we are comfortable with the higher stock allocation of the fund for greater gains (and greater risk).
VTIVX is 71 percent invested in domestic stocks, 19 percent in international stocks, and 10 percent in bonds (all through index funds). It's expense ratio is a paltry 0.20 percent, lowest among its peers, and its inception to date return (2003) is a very decent 14.14 percent. This is a great investment vehicle for a Roth IRA, for example.
Lucas is three months old today. Milestones from the past month: actively smiling, making lots of talking and singing noises, able to hold his head up for an extended period of time, and longer intervals between night feedings (4 hours average). He's also wearing his 6 month sleepers and he also is now using size 1 diapers.
Here's a video of him playing actively with his rainforest bouncer and a picture of him sitting in Kaelyn's very pink stroller.
This past weekend my parents were also in town, and here's a picture of our "tribe." We're wearing orange shirts with an image of my grandparents (the Beltrans had a reunion in the Philippines last month that we were not able to attend and this was the way to identify the families).
For Lucas' twelve week old post, here is a video of him raising his head high for a full two minutes! Also, a shot of him smiling while raising his head. He's growing up fast!
