Saturday Lindsay and I went shopping for baby stuff to start grasping just how much this little tyke is going to cost us.  This stuff is quite expensive if your looking for new stuff, however as some know my Scottish heritage will always find the good deals out there.

There are tons of stores in Edmonton such as E-Children, Babies R Us, Baby Sam, etc…  I actually remember Baby Sam from long ago when my good friends Kyle and Erron where shopping there and they needed a truck to haul their new stuff home.  At that time I was nowhere near ready to have kids and didn’t even think I’d be doing that type of shopping anytime soon.  Well fast forward what, 8 years and now I’m doing the same thing they were. Pretty darn exciting.  We cannot wait to get the baby room all decorated and painted towards the end of this month.  One quick note, we are not finding out the sex of the baby, so most of our decorating will be gender neutral.  Lindsay found a pretty sweet crib sheet and comforter set which will be perfect for either a girl or boy.

One of the things we are excited about though is paying for our baby stuff in cash and not going into debt for it.  Trust me this will probably be much harder than buying a vehicle and wanting to pay for it in cash. Why?  Because it’s your child!  You want to buy the best for them and sometimes we let that get the best of us and do ridiculous things.  I’m thankful for the friends we have in our life and the association of people that also think going into debt isn’t a smart idea, even if it’s buying stuff for your kids.  We’ve got lots of examples of upline, crossline and friends who are paying for baby stuff in cash and are not going into debt and I love that example.  It’s quite powerful.  Don’t misunderstand me those examples are not *just* in this business, they are out there but just harder to find because we as Canadians live a carefree debt lifestyle, so much so the government has to step in and change mortgage rules to stop us from being stupid. (Check out Garth Turner’s Perspective on that).

Anyway this is just another example of places where people can get carried away. Stop, check yourself and your finances and make sure your doing the right thing.  Go shopping, find out the costs of things, and then save up for them and pay it in cash. Stop doing what every other Canadian does and thinking debt is cool, it’s not. It only hurts you and your family in the long run.