I thought it would be interesting to give an update on a few of my old posts as well as a bit of news.
After ranting about the fact that we still use pennies, Ram from Canadian Capitalist mentioned using a coin star machine so I took all my pennies and nickels over to a local machine and got rid of them all! They do charge 10% but who cares? I still have a lot of dimes but I’m planning to roll them if I can find some dime rollers, however they might end up in the CS machine as well.
I wrote a book review on James Grant’s “Money of the Mind” a while back. This book dealt with the problem of financial institutions becoming too lax in their lending standards when times are good and when things go south then they lose a lot of money, get too conservative and won’t lend any money for a while. Sound familiar?
And one other update – in my Chasing China post I described how I sold my China mutual fund even though it was doing very well because it didn’t fit with my style of investing. Since I sold it the fund has gone up 48% over the last ten months. But I’m not (very) bitter and it still doesn’t fit with my investing style!
And as for the title of the post…
I’d like to announce that we are expecting our second child next year. We’ve had a great time (so far) raising our son and we are really looking forward to having another kid.
Not sure how much this will impact our finances since we really didn’t have to pay for much of anything with our son. We kept all of his clothes and will undoubtedly start receiving shipments of used little “girl” clothes any time from friends and family.
The only expenses I can think of off hand are a new bed for our son since the new baby will get his old crib and eventually a second car seat once she grows out of his old newborn car seat.
Perhaps this will lead to a second baby expense theme entitled “Costs of having a second child?”?
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Congrats on the new addition coming to your family Mike!
Congratulations! That is wonderful news!
Congratulations Mike! Is it a girl this time?
I’d still say you did the right move with selling the China fund. There is lot of performance chasing going on with emerging markets in general.
Mazel tov Mike! A lot of bloggers seem to be expecting at the moment …. I’d better be careful about drinking the water.
Thanks everyone – yes, it’s a girl.
Mike
Congrats on the baby!
I love pennies….and I can’t believe you gave up 10% to CoinStar! My local credit union has a machine that counts change (you just have to ask) and doesn’t take any fees….
Congrats Mike!
Congrats on the upcoming arrival of the 4th Pillar!
Thanks – SD, what is your address? I’d be happy to send all my pennies to you
Mike
Mike: Congrats to you and Mrs. 4P! I guess marriage pays dividends sometimes, eh? (am I evil to consider children dividends?
I think you were 100% correct to sell the chinese mutual fund. You never know when the ride is going to stop (although obviously we’d all love to ride it until the day before the crash). When there’s a correction I’m sure it’ll go below what you sold it for (at which point you’ll be happy).
Did Grant suggest a solution to these “banking cycles” or does he say they’re inevitable?
Mr. C – Marriage pays dividends ALL the time!
I’m only saying that because I know Mrs. Pillars will read this
.
Re: Grant – I don’t remember if he had a solution in that book but the other book of his that I read (which I meant to mention in the post) talked about the rise and fall of economic cycles and how government intervention to “soften” the down cycles might help extend them (ie bailing out some of the subprime players).
Mike
Mike,
YA! I’m not the only one with another kid on the way! I hope I recall how to live on that little sleep again.
Want to do a joint series on a the costs of a second kid? Our due date is early May.
Tim
Thanks Tim – sounds like a great idea.
Mike
Ahh, congrats, Mike! With your previous and upcoming baby expense articles and the RESP series, your children are in wonderful hands!
Mrs. Pillars reads your posts?! Wow, I guess you got a keeper. Mrs. WiseAcres just pokes fun of me and Rob.
Congrats, Mike!
Woohoo! Congratulations! I guess you and the Mrs. are further along than we are if you know she’s a girl! That’s exciting – the Quest for Four Pillars is now complete (or does it need to become Quest for Five Pillars to keep including Mr. Cheap?)
Thanks Mariam for the vote of confidence!
Mike – I’m kind of hoping there is more than one Mrs. WiseAcres? (not that it’s any of my business
)
Mike
Thanks BB – we’re due beginning of April.
Mr. Cheap and I will have to discuss the possible renaming of the blog as you suggest
.
Mike
Congrats on expecting your new family addition! For my wife and I, the main expenses with the 2nd child were furnishings for her room, car seat like you mentioned, and of course our portion of the hospital stay. The biggest change was balancing life with both kids and keeping the oldest involved in “taking care of the baby” made it a much more enjoyable transition.
Congrats!!!!!!!
Girls are fun. Boys are fun too of course but girl *clothes* are fun. Expect your wife to start shopping. No matter how many boxes of girl clothes you receive.
(And let me know if you want another box of slightly used but still very precious girl clothes in any size up to 12 months lol)
Thanks a lot PT – luckily my wife isn’t a shopper, but we’ll see what happens with the little girl’s clothes.
Congratulations! Did you mention a date when baby girl will arrive? As for baby clothes- there are so many nice things in second hand stores and they are cheap! So it can be fun and frugal shopping
Thanks WW – she will be arriving in the beginning of April (don’t have an exact date yet).
Our main clothing plan is to use a lot of our son’s clothing as well as some girl’s clothing from my sister who has two young daughters.
Mike
Okay, not really sure how I managed to miss this post for so long…
Congrats, Mike! That’s wonderful news. And how exciting that it’s a girl since you already have a boy.
Maybe Guinness is right. Maybe it is the water.
Thanks Fecundity.
Mike
The costs? I like to refer to them as investment. And this is why I really enjoy your posts. You keep a human side to finances. You do understand what is important and why we all do this.
Congratulations… again.
Thanks a lot CR. One of the things I try to do with my posts is to either be creative with the topic or approach or to use myself as an example in the case where maybe the topic isn’t all that original (ie life insurance).
Mike