The hubby and I will be finding out the gender of our baby on Wednesday morning.  According to this , I will be having a boy, but the hubby really wants a girl.  He made a bet with me that if it is a girl I will buy him a boardgame, and if it is a boy he will buy me some salted caramels that I have been craving.  Anyway, we have actually had this discussion before about how much it would cost to raise a son versus  how much it would cost to raise a daughter.  Here are some of our observations and other people’s research.

First of all, lets start with my family.  If you have been following this blog you’d know that I am an only child due to the only child policy in China so my parents had no one to spend money on besides me.  However, I do have a male cousin that was born just three days earlier than me.  He is really the closest relation I have to a brother and we played together almost every weekend when we were kids.  I came to the United States when I was nine and my cousin is still currently in China.  In China it is pretty much given that middle class parents would spend a lot more money on a boy due to education and wedding expenses.  Even though single female children are also prized in the cities they do not come with the wedding costs.  Middle and upper class Chinese parents of a son are expected to provide the wedding banquet, gifts, and in most cases a home for their son when they get married.  A girl just has to find a nice family to marry into, but urban families do spend quite a bit of money on the education of female children these days that rival their educational expenditure on a male child.  My family has met quite a few singleton Chinese females who are studying in the United States with almost of all of their parents’ money.  But overall,  in my family I would say that a male child is more expensive due to the Chinese tradition of providing a lot more for a son.  However, I did get married in America and the custom here is that the bride’s family pays for a wedding, and my parents were very generous, but the percentage of money they spent on me compared to their income probably pales to what my aunt and uncle have spent on my cousin.  In China parents really sacrifice everything for their only children, and the burden on parents who have a son is definitely greater than those who have a daughter.

Now the hubby’s family has one boy and one girl and both were raised in America.  From my point of view his parents spent a similar amount of money on both of them.  Both of them went to private schools for their entire sixteen years of education and the hubby’s parents provided money or equity towards real estate purchases for both of them.  I’m not too sure about the smaller expenditures during their childhood, but it seems that both kids were quite expensive regardless of gender. So in the hubby’s family it seems that gender did not matter.  I am sure that one of them cost more than the other if you added up every single cost line by line, but for the most part I think the big expenses were similar and the hubby’s parents sacrificed a lot for both of them.

According to last year, boys actually cost more than girls.  This was based on a survey conducted by a company called GE Money on 2000 British parents. Supposedly this is due to the fact that boys want more expensive toys like electronics and girls want cheaper toys.  We do see this a bit in the hubby’s younger cousins.  A girl cousin is happy with small things like lotions and nail polish but her brother usually loves getting video games and gaming consoles, which are a lot more expensive.  Boy’s clothing is also more expensive because there is less competition.  This is true of men’s and women’s clothes, too.  If you haven’t noticed, the women’s or girl’s departments are usually bigger at stores, and with more brands competing the prices are cheaper.  I think another factor in why boys would cost more than girls is that boys are more assertive in what they want.  When you ask a boy what they want for their birthday or Christmas they can usually tell you, but a girl can be less direct or less decisive.  So as a result, parents are more likely to buy things for boys because boys  made their wishes known.

Anyway, if we have a boy we might not have to spend extra money on  electronic gadgets because his daddy would have all the latest toys already.  We have already talked about a plan to rent out my hubby’s video game consoles to our kid.  For example, we can exchange gaming time for chores done.  That would be a while in the future, but the hubby is excited at the prospect of playing board and video games with our kid already.  We are definitely prepared for the kid financially regardless of the gender, but it is interesting to think that raising a child of one gender could cost less than raising one of  the other gender.

Yesterday my friend had a lovely little baby girl. She is about a whole month early but she is okay! She looks a lot like her mom. Hopefully we will get to see her this weekend. Additionally, I received an advanced copy of the new Wise Bread book: . I really love how it is laid out. I only have a few articles in there because I don’t write many tips lists, but it is still pretty cool to see my name in it! If you are a financial blogger or press and would like to review the book you can probably

Besides these exciting developments, I am gaining a little weight due to my own pregnancy. My hubby keeps on telling me to prepare some maternity clothes, but I’m not quite big enough to need maternity clothes, yet. Today we went to Target and left the store with nothing, because most of the maternity section had capri pants that were way too big for me and the shirts were just like my normal shirts. Now my hubby says he’ll whine to my mom to buy clothes for me since I am horrible at shopping for clothes.

Since I’m in my 15th week now I have asked HR what forms I need to fill out for my maternity leave. I am planning to take leave two weeks before my due date mostly because all the moms I know that had their first babies in the last year had their babies 2 to 5 weeks before their due dates. I really don’t want to be at the office while I go into labor. The good news is that I found out that my employer has private short term disability insurance that I can use in conjunction with the state short term disability so I can get 100% of my pay during the pregnancy disability leave, which would be anywhere from 6 to 8 weeks depending on whether or not I have a C section.

As to child birth, I am hoping that I would not need a C-section, but sometimes it is unavoidable. In the case of my friend the doctors determined that her baby cannot tolerate a normal delivery due to various issues. I was in the room when they told her that she probably needs a C-section and one of the doctors was really quite scary. She said that if my friend attempted a normal delivery it is possible that the baby might go into distress and then they would need to perform an emergency C-section and “slash and cut and burn”. While the doctor said those words she was making motions of brandishing a scalpel. I was just speechless, and after she left the room my friend’s husband said, “What was that?? She was making some scary motions.” I really feel that sometimes doctors tells people the worst thing that could happen, but I guess it is better to be safe than sorry.

Anyway, this year is going by quite quickly. It still feels a bit surreal that we will be having a baby, and I don’t think it has hit us yet because everything is going along just as before. I am not getting sick at all and work is not overly stressful right now since we just finished a big release. The hubby and I are still spending a lot of time watching TV and playing games. I think I am playing more games now since I feel like once I am a mom I will have much less leisure time.  In terms of preparing for the baby so far I requested a free sample of diapers and a free sample of infant formula.  I think that is good enough.

My husband and I are both fortunate to have generous parents who paid for most of our college expenses.  From my experience, it seems that in the Asian community parents are always expected to pay for their children’s higher education. I have even heard of stories of some parents who take money from their homes or retirement  to pay for a son or daughter’s schooling. Now that I am expecting a child, I am wondering if parents are really obligated to pay for their children’s higher education.  After all, parents already spend considerable time and money raising a child into an adult.  Should they be obligated to pay the expenses of their legally adult children  for another four years or more?

My personal take on this is that parents really have no obligation to pay for college after raising their children to age eighteen because they have done enough.  Parents who pay for their kids’ college expenses are bestowing their children a huge gift, but when something comes too easily  it may not be appreciated as much as something earned by hard work. I have met quite a few classmates who had everything paid for and then later dropped out because they did not focus on their studies.  On the other hand,  I know some people who did not have parental help during college who worked extremely hard and ended up doing quite well.  They did so well precisely because they did not have a parental financial cushion, and they knew that they needed to work hard and  be on the top to win more scholarships and internships.

Some parents use the fact that they are paying for college to dictate many aspects of their children’s lives, and I really think that is worse than not paying for college.  I know too many people who hated what they were studying in college but still soldiered on because they felt like they were obligated to please their parents by graduating with a degree in a certain major. Many of these classmates ended up doing something radically different from their college majors after they were out of college and tasted freedom.  These outcomes make the parental sponsored schooling almost pointless.

When parents refuse to pay for their children’s higher education, they are basically letting the young adults become independent right after highschool.  That is not a bad thing at all because there has to be a point where parents let go of their children and let them survive on their own.  I have to admit that I only felt true freedom after I graduated from college and got my first job because I truly no longer depended on my parents. For some people higher education is not necessary for success, and letting a young adult explore the possibilities outside of an institutionalized education system might also be beneficial.

In closing, I think parents should not feel obligated to pay for their children’s higher education unless they are legally ordered to do so by a court. I would probably help my kid with college expenses since I am sure any school will become extremely expensive in 18 years, but I would help in the form of a loan of some sort.  As the cost of higher education rises it is impossible to expect parents to afford everything and the college aged children will have to pitch in by securing scholarships, grants, and work to fund their own education if they want it.

This is a topic my husband and I have discussed numerous times since his parents packed up, sold and gave away practically everything,  and became missionaries. Now that we are expecting a baby we are considering it further.  If we were to move we would probably go to our house in Chino Hills, and here is a list of pros and cons that came up in our discussions.

First, I think the biggest thing that I have kvetched about is the cost of living here in the Bay Area.  My husband and I both feel some of the nesting instinct now and he really wants his kid to grow up in a nice house with a backyard, like the one he grew up in. I think it is  reasonable to wish that  your child’s life to be as good or even better than yours.   To have a house comparable to the one we have in Chino Hills we would need over a million dollars here.  The school district in Chino Hills has elementary and middle schools with API scores over 900, and that kind of scores also give real estate a further premium here in the Bay Area. The amount of mortgage we pay on the Chino Hills home is less than our rent for a two bedroom apartment here, and it just seems ridiculous that we cannot reasonably afford the same quality of life here in the Bay Area even though we have above average incomes.

We both expect that we will not make as much money down south.  There just aren’t that many high tech companies there, and the unemployment rate in the Inland Empire is much higher than here in the Silicon Valley right now.  However, we are both pretty talented and graduated from the top engineering programs in the nation so we are pretty confident we will find something.  Chino Hills is also situated right on the border of Orange County so there are job opportunities there.  Of course, we will try to find jobs there before we decide to leave.

There are some  circumstances that could keep us in the Bay Area forever. One big thing is family.  Right now pretty much all of our family members live within an one hour drive and having that support system is quite valuable. We also have more friends here in the Bay Area than in Southern California.     Also, if we cannot find reasonable employment down south then we would probably just stay here.  The hubby also likes the weather here a lot more, but Southern California is actually sunnier and I prefer that more.

Anyway, we are not planning to move right now or even right after the baby is born.  The hubby is thinking of making a decision on this sometime before the kid enters elementary school so it may happen in five years, or not at all. I am definitely all for moving to a  higher quality of life if possible.  Meanwhile I am also working on generating a good non-salary income so that we can go wherever we want to.

Well, my hubby has finally done it.  We are officially pregnant.  He actually banned me from telling anyone until he made sure he saw the little amorphous blob’s heartbeat yesterday.  After he got home from the hospital he was super excited and .  He called it a nooblet, which is a term taken from this nerdy gamer show called 

The doctor told us that the due date is 10/31, and my hubby said, “Nooo!  I don’t want a Halloween baby!”  However, very few women actually deliver on their calculated due dates, so he may not be getting a Halloween baby.  Personally, I think that would be kind of neat, because our kid could invite other kids over for costumed birthday parties.

My husband and I are already talking about what leave we could take when the baby arrives.  Personally I will have about a month of paid vacation saved up, and then we both can get 6 weeks of   The paid family leave is paid at 55% of our salary from the SDI program which we pay into.  There is no California income tax on that money and we could spread out the leave between the two of us so it would not be a very big financial strain.  I do not think I would qualify for the pregnancy disability leave because my job mostly consists of thinking and typing and I am allowed to work at home.  Unless I am ordered by the doctor to bedrest I would not be considered disabled. Anyway, we will both talk to our HR departments soon.  All things considered, November is actually a good month to have the baby because there are already many paid holidays in November and December during the holiday season, and it would be more relaxing to take time off then because most other people will be taking time off.  Also, we can claim the baby as a tax exemption for the entire year and save some money on taxes.

Another thing we have to consider is which health insurance plan to add our baby to.  My husband currently has a PPO plan and I have Kaiser HMO.    Right now both of us pay very little for our health insurance because our employers pretty much covered everything.  Kaiser is really convenient for us because the hospital is about a mile away and they have everything there.  It is likely that we will just add the child to my insurance, and this will cost about $100 more a month.

Anyway, before all of that happens, I have to actually get through this pregnancy.  So far my hubby is thankful that I am not puking my guts out.  I am actually feeling pretty good and I am eating more than usual.  I am also sleeping a lot, so I am blogging quite a bit less.  I guess after the baby is born I would also be a “mommy blogger”, but I promise I will not be chronicling every diaper rash.