It's 10PM and I'm snacking on oatmeal chocolate chip cookies!

Yummy!!! We co-sleep and Ed is finally getting into a deep enough sleep that I can actually leave his side, thank goodness considering the swing just isn't cutting it anymore. I had to get outta bed, DH is in there playing Fallout3 on the PS3 and every time he shoots someone I cringe and look at the baby...is he going to wake up? It's better not to put myself through that, so here I am :)

In our family I handle the finances, I'm a saver and DH is a spender. Even though he worked at the bank when we first started dating he has no interest in handling our finances and he doesn't mind that I do. Okay, so I say I'm a saver, but I still like to spend but I make sure that our savings are covered first...you know that whole "Pay yourself first" stuff. Prior to having Ed I was a bit obsessive, we have a budget and I have an Excel spreadsheet I created for tracking the next three months' expenditures (plus a bunch of other finance-related tabs). I used to carry the file around on a USB key on my keyring so I could access it from work or home, now I just need it at home but I've since moved to OpenOffice's Calc program (it's free and it's pretty much exactly like Excel, and i couldn't find my MS Office cds). I even visited a plethora of PF blogs, aka. Personal Finance blogs. My favorite were/are:

http://www.milliondollarjourney.com/
http://www.four-pillars.ca/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/

The first two are Canadian and both dads (they have baby related finance entries) and were very helpful in teaching me quite a bit about a variety of personal finance issues. Of course, now a days I don't get the chance to visit them and my days are filled with other things or I'm on a baby website or Facebook instead.

Since Ed I've gotten so lazy with keeping up, so much so I paid interest on our Visa for the second time in my entire life because I missed the payment date by like 2 or 3 days...darn!!! And of course prior to Ed we had a card with rewards (that we can't even use anymore - free movies from Scotiabank...movies in a theatre?!, pssshhh, maybe in like 3 years or so) and a high interest rate....but only because we never paid interest. I probably should have called and see if they would have given me a break but I coudn't be bothered, my loss. At least I'm keeping up on the utility bills :D and since my payment lapse I make sure I get online and pay them as soon as they come through the mail slot or to my email inbox now...crying baby or not ;)

The other thing, finance-related, that I have been wondering about and being hounded about by telemarketers, is starting up an RESP for Ed -- even if I was going to start an RESP it wouldn't be from some insistant telemarketer. They threaten me with the likes of "he's going to have to pay $75k for education when it's time for him to go to school". I'm so torn on the issue of starting an RESP and more specifically on entirely funding my child's secondary education. I went to school with so many people who's education was funded by their parents and they basically pissed away several years at university. Myself on the otherhand, worked to get a scholarship and worked throughout university. I think DH and I have agreed that we would definitely offer to help out Ed with school if we were able...but I'm still uncertain as to whether I want to start a fund now. I think I'd rather have the house paid off first. Time to revisit my favorite finance blogs and see how the PF gurus weight in on the issue :)