A few years ago, my husband and I went to see a financial counselor.
Our son had just been born, and we had to put things in shape.
Complicating this was that we were coming from different worlds: Rob
was (and is) enlisted in the Air Force, I was a New York City magazine
editor. The way our wages were calculated, the tax rules that applied,
how we could see our careers playing out—everything was so different
between us.
Our financial planner, it turned out, had himself been in the military
for many years, and he had great suggestions on how to use all our many
benefits: We got a super low-rate loan, wrote up our will totally free,
and found out how to basically get our son’s college paid for. Yay!
So I wanted to pass on that benefit to all the military moms out there
(without the honking fee we paid, ouch!). If you have a money question,
send it in, and we’ll get Jim Ludwick, founder of
MainStreet Financial Planning, which offices in Washington DC and in California, (and a former serviceman himself) to weigh in.
By the holidays, your finances will be ship-shape!
We’re beginning to wonder aloud: how
will our cats cope with the baby? We’ve put a net on the crib, and are secretly
planning to kick them out of the bedroom altogether… this will definitely
disrupt Zen’s hard-set cuddling routine. We’re not sure how she’ll react. We
have friends whose cat became so depressed upon the arrival of a baby that it
lost enough weight to land itself in the hospital with an IV drip. Another rebelled
by pooping all over its owners’ rugs. This leads to our other lurking question,
as-yet-unspoken but undoubtedly there: once the baby’s born, as much as we love
our cats, how will we cope with them?
