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.

Today the overseers of Social Security and Medicare due to the recession and falling tax revenues.  Medicare is already pulling in less tax revenues than it pays out in benefits and will no longer be able to pay 100% of benefits in less than 8 years.  It seems that these programs would need to either increase tax rates or cut back benefits to be sustainable.  At the same time, many Americans are calling for , which means that the government alone would set up a health insurance system that pays all medical claims and negotiate rates with care providers.  Essentially, people are clamoring for universal healthcare, but how much would it cost?  Here are some of my thoughts on the issue.

First of all, I agree that healthcare expenses are  quite ridiculous in America.  If you ever get an itemized bill from a hospital where you were treated you would see that some small items such as bandaids are charged at exorbitant rates.  If you have adequate insurance from your workplace then the out of pocket expenses are not so bad.  For example, I will be paying $100 total for my upcoming delivery and hospital stay.  However, if you do not have good insurance having a baby could cost tens of thousands of dollars.  One of my friends said that a doctor was in her room for about half an hour while she was delivering her baby, and in the itemized bill she got the charge for that service was over $3000.  It is really no surprise to me that unexpected medical expenses are the number one cause of .

The biggest problem I see with the current system is that there is not much transparency in how much each hospital and care provider charges for various services.  Every care provider sets their own price for the uninsured and then another set of prices for each insurer they deal with.  There is pretty much no way for a consumer to get a decent discount without going through an insurer.  Basically, there is this extra layer of medical insurance consumers have to wade through.  Consumers are forced to shop between medical insurers, and not medical servicers and the priorities of medical insurers and medical servicers are vastly different.  Medical insurers do not want to pay for claims if they don’t have to, and so they have an incentive to reject applicants who need care the most.  As a result,medical insurance is prohibitively expensive for those with existing conditions or need constant care.

So what happens if the government takes over the healthcare system completely?  If that happens consumers will not have the choice of choosing between insurers and the government will have to negotiate prices with the care providers.  It would cut down a lot of overhead, but  it may not cost less than the current system for the individual consumer and here is why. Currently most people in America have some form of employment sponsored private insurance that costs very little out of pocket. Even without an employer, there are high deductible plans available with low premiums for most healthy people that individuals can choose from.   Some young healthy individuals even skip health insurance to save money because they have the choice to do so.    However, if we switch to a completely government based system it would be paid out of taxes, and there would be no choice but to pay it.   Currently Medicare is 2.9% of payroll, and it is not enough to insure just  the elderly and disabled.  It is estimated that Medicare taxes needs to be nearly 7% of payroll to be sustainable.  Just imagine if the program has to cover everyone in the United States and you will see that the tax may be well over 10% of someone’s pay.  Do you currently pay 10% of your yearly income on medical insurance?  I certainly don’t, and I think most people don’t.

I think a better way to healthcare reform is to let consumers have more transparency into the costs of services and allow a bit of comparison shopping.  I know how much it costs to fix my car, so why can’t I know how much it costs to remove a mole? It is possible that some people do not need insurance if they just want some basic preventive services that can be provided by care providers directly at reasonable rates provided that they stay healthy.   Insurers also shouldn’t be able to reject or price gouge patients based on existing conditions because everyone should get the care they need.  Perhaps universal healthcare could work here, but  many more relatively healthy people will have to pitch in much more money than before, and they won’t have a choice in the matter.  Once such a system is in place it would also be very difficult to remove, and it would only get more expensive as people live longer lives.

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.

Yesterday my husband and I went out on a daytrip to Pescadero.  We haven’t really gone out on the weekends for a while so this was quite special.  We really enjoyed our time in this small historic town, and here is the story.

I got up quite early for a Saturday and the hubby followed soon after.  He charged his camera batteries and we headed out.  We drove through the mountains and ancient redwood forests on the extremly windy highway 84.  Along the way there were many bikers and I wondered how they got up there, and my husband was simply annoyed that some of them were hogging the entire road.  Once we hit highway 1 we turned left towards Pescadero.  We planned to stop at the Pigeon Point Lighthouse first.

I first saw the lighthouse from a distance when .  I remembered the order of things a bit erroneously so I thought that Pigeon Point Lighthouse was north of Pescadero.  Once we already past Pescadero and still did not see the lighthouse my husband started to doubt my directions.  Pigeon Point is supposed to be one of the tallest lighthouses in North America, and he kept on asking me why we still do not see it.  I started to point behind a bunch of bushes and once we past it he laughed at me and said I was just pointing at a stick.  Then suddenly he saw the lighthouse perched at the edge of the ocean.  We turned in and found some parking in the dirt.

The lighthouse is currently not open to visitors because in 2001 two large pieces of its cornice fell to the ground, and so far San Mateo has not raised enough money to fix it.  However, the grounds are open and there was a surprisingly large number of visitors there including a lot of parents with kids.  I guessed that many of these visitors were trying to save a bit of money since the attraction is free.   The grounds were absolutely beautiful as flowers of all colors are currently blooming.  The normally brown cliffs were covered with dots of yellow and sea birds glided in the sky.  We then walked around a small path to the front of the lighthouse, and there was a flower patch with two giant pieces of whale bone.  One was a vertebrae and one was a humongous skull.  They looked quite eerie in a background of cheerful magenta and yellow flowers.

After visiting the lighthouse it was nearly 1pm, so we went to find some grub.  We planned to go to , a historic restaurant and bar in Pescadero that has been there since 1894.    It is famous for its artichoke dishes, olallieberry pie, and various seafood since Pescadero is supposed to be a fishing town.  Everything there is made locally and my company actually took us there during the retreat.  I just didn’t know how famous it was then.  I did remember the delicious artichoke soup and ollalieberry pie.   It was actually  on an episode of Food Network’s and the host ate the house special cioppino.  I saw the picture of the cioppino online and salivated a bit over it.  So we drove a few miles north from the lighthouse and stopped at Duarte’s.  There was quite a crowd there and we were told that we had to wait for 10 to 15 minutes.  This wasn’t too bad so we waited and got a round table very close to the bathrooms.

After we got the menu I looked at the cioppino, and it was the most expensive dish there!  My husband encouraged me to get it since we really didn’t spend too much money eating out last month.  So I ordered it and he ordered a crab melt sandwhich.  The waitress gave us two sets of dishes, crab crackers, and a bib for the cioppino.  My husband thought it was funny that we were given bibs, and then the GIANT dish of crab legs, prawns, and clams came out.  I put my bib on because I knew that I was going to make a mess.  The hubby thought that was so funny that he took a picture.  We shared the crab sandwhich first just to get rid of a plate, and that was quite excellent.  It was pretty much all crab meat hugged by cheese and well toasted buttery bread.  There wasn’t much vegetable fillers in the crab like you would find  in other restaurants.  Then we started working on the cioppino, and it was seriously the longest meal we ever had in a restaurant, but it was a lot of fun to pull out all the crab meat and then drink a bit of the soup.

After eating everything we were quite full but I really wanted some ollallieberry pie and I have talked about it so much that my hubby really wanted to try it.  So we walked down about a block to a small market and bakery.  They had a collection of all types of pies and all kinds of local foods.  Some of the artisan breads with artichokes and cheese just smelled intoxicating.   We just bought a pie to go and went onto the next destination – Pebble Beach.

The 71 miles of the San Mateo coast is unusual in that it is very close to large centers of population, but very few people visit so the beaches are quite pristine. The hubby and I have been to Half Moon Bay multiple times to beach comb and walk, but we never drove as far south as Pescadero.  As we were driving there the hubby said that we will not find these  uncrowded clean beaches in Southern California.  Pescadero has several beaches including Pescadero State Beach, Bean Hollow Beanch, and Pebble Beach.    Pebble Beach is a very small beach that is unique in that instead of sand it is covered by pebbles of all colors.  The pebbles are polished by the tides so they glisten in the sun.  There is also a very large area of tidepools next to it where you can find small marine life.     We walked down to the pebbles section and took pictures of the holey sand formations and pebbles first, and then walked over to the tidepools.  There were small fish, hermit crabs, and tons of snails in the tidepools, but nothing extremely exciting.  The hubby was hoping to see some colorful anemones or starfish so he could take pictures and he was disappointed.  So we went back to the pebbles area and dug around.  A lot of the stones were quite pretty and some of them were laced agates like the ones my mom and I used to dig up in construction sand when I was a kid.  It is illegal to take the pebbles because they are natural  materials, but we found some tiny pieces of sea glass so we took those.  The entire beach just smelled so fresh and it felt so good to sit down on the omnipresent pebbles.  It was definitely more fun than walking on sand.

After hanging around for about an hour we decided to head home as the sky became overcast.   We stopped to buy some vanilla ice cream and then I warmed up a slice of olallieberry pie for each of us when we got home and topped them with the ice cream.  It certainly made my tastebuds happy.

We definitely had a lot of fun exploring this part of San Mateo County, and I think instead of major vacations we could definitely save money by going on more day trips of places near us.  The Bay Area definitely has a lot of interesting places to see and experience just within an one to two hour drive.  After going to Pescadero we found that there is a seal preserve near by where you can see thousands of seals from December to March.  We might go visit next year!

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.