(Belated) Father's Day Post - Investment Advice

I found myself sitting in my father-in-law's extraordinarily comfortable, tweed recliner, receiving another lesson in finance over a plastic cup of red wine. As I embraced the warm daze brought on by cheap spirits and fine La-Z-Boy construction, Steve, my father-in-law, explained the advantages of using exponential moving averages in an investment strategy:

(Conversation paraphrased)

"When the 50-day moving average dips below the 200-day moving average, you have a down-ward trend. This is your cue to 'pull the trigger'. When the 50-day crosses again, heading North, that's your cue to buy. Now look at this." Gesturing to his laptop, two lines materialized on a graph. One line was bumpy, heading in a generally upward direction, the other line, though also maintaining a general upward trend, looked like the results of a very nervous man's lie detector test. "An investor who follows this strategy generally performs as well as an investor who lets it ride, but his investments maintain a great deal of stability by eliminating the big swings in your portfolio. Now, the strategy has its problems. You can get burned on sharp upswings and downswings, if you don't act fast enough. Or, you can get burned on rapid repeated shifts in the market. Finally, when you cash out your investments, you can get burned on taxes. So, this isn't a replacement for your 401 K or even your Roth. But, if you have those fully funded and are looking for more to invest, this is a nice, stable strategy."

I was unimpressed. "It's a good strategy for people nearing retirement and perhaps for those without the stomach for the market, but for those of us with a few decades to go and the ability to endure the down-swings, the 'let it ride' strategy is better if only for its simplicity."

That's when Steve called upon that intrepid wisdom that only experienced dad's can muster: "You don't know what you don't know. You can't predict when you'll need the money. With the baby coming, security needs to be your priority."

He was right. I was looking at investing as a way to generate wealth-not security-and this was a problem. Up to this point, Sarah and I had been planning for Dominic for months, and in some ways, we'd been planning for him for years. But we'd only focused on the changes we needed to make in our lives, especially those things we needed to stop doing. I was putting aside video games (for the most part), spending a little less time with friends, and putting in more hours at work. She was watching what medications she took, abstaining from alcohol and sushi, laying on her left side and avoiding roller-coasters. We then realized that we needed to very purposefully re-imagine our lives: To not just to plan how Dominic will affect us but to establish a plan for Dominic. This sounds pretty obvious, but it's the sort of thing you just don't think about in the moment. Investments aside, we needed to rebalance our life-portfolio. (Corny, I know).

Delays & Excuses

I really enjoy this blog, and I promise I will resume posting. I just have to finish my master's essay. In the mean time, I've made a few minor page tweaks. Well, I've made one worth mentioning: I've added my Twitter Feed. If there's anybody who wasn't getting enough Dad Undaunted before, the feed should satiate you, until I can finish my essay.

Rehash, Part 2 - A Real Pain in the Butt

Our initial grappling with the pregnancy was...less than graceful. We had been preparing to eventually have a child for about a year by this point. We had purchased several books and casually flipped through them. We had found and bookmarked several baby-related websites. And, we had several conversations on the subject parenthood. You know those types of conversations. They're the ones you overhear some couple talking about while sipping $4 coffee at Starbucks. They're about things like: how we feel about discipline, or balancing jobs and family, or planning when we might want to have a child. Things one talks about when the word someday can be appropriately used to describe their situation. As we saw it, the only real challenge in our immediate future was making that delicate balance between my desire for a doctorate and my wife's desire to have a child before we hit the retirement home.

After receiving confirmation from the doctor that Sarah was indeed pregnant, we quickly realized just how unprepared we were. We had no idea how the pregnancy was going to change us, just that it would-and in huge ways. Financially, we were less than secure. I had the luxury of holding down a temp job, which is to say that I worked sometimes.

Additionally, I was still spending thousands of dollars on my masters degree, hoping to one day spend tens of thousands more on a doctorate. Intellectually, we were pretty much in the dark. Despite all our so-called preparing, we were still basically ignorant of the whole pregnancy process. Emotionally, we were wrecks. The doctor had previously warned us against conceiving for a little while. Sarah wasn't in any immediate danger, but the doctor suspected something might be awry. Something that would greatly increase the chance of a miscarriage.

With that bit of advice circling through our brains for-oh about the first 22 weeks of the pregnancy, we found ourselves in the horrific position of wondering if we shouldn't get too attached to the baby in lieu of the probable miscarriage. Ironically, the fear of losing the child exacerbated the fear of having the child. Since we didn't want to let the full reality of having a baby sink in, we couldn't move from the "I-don't-know-what-I'm-doing-and-I'm-scared" phase to the "I-still-don't-know-what-I'm-doing-but-I'm-excited" phase.

Further adding to all this was the one real complication that we faced during the pregnancy. For the first half of the pregnancy, Sarah's test results kept showing that her progesterone was too low. The solution was as crude in its simplicity as it was unpleasant for Sarah: Sarah was to receive a shot in her rump two times per week. These shots began as well as one would imagine, but ended around her fourth month when one too many shots were given in one location, resulting in painful tissue damage, swelling and bruising. I'm not entirely sure how to describe what occurred. "Swelling and bruising" just doesn't convey how bad her situation was. Sarah could neither sit comfortably nor sit without leaning to one side...It looked like someone had half-buried a softball in her derriere...Fortunately for Sarah, her progesterone levels had picked themselves up by this time and were just about in the preferred range.

This was a difficult time for both of us, but, clearly, this was a far more difficult time for Sarah than me. The good news is: I did eventually find a steadier job. We did read through all the books we had purchased (which only served to further inform us of our ignorance!). We have several plans and contingency plans in place, so that I can pursue my dream of becoming a theology professor in a seminary. We have made it into the "I-still-don't-know-what-I'm-doing-but-I'm-excited" phase. And, Sarah's health (as well as her bottom) is in great shape!

NOTE: Much of this blog is about Sarah. Because of that, I got her permission before publishing this. I'm well aware that one should always seek permission before revealing private details about another's life, especially if that other is your wife!

Rehash, Part 1 - The Discovery

To begin, I'm going to retrace the events and my reactions since we found out Sarah was pregnant...Sometime in late August:

Sarah and I hadn't really cut-loose in a while. We decided that we were really going to party it up on the night of Sarah's Sister's wedding. We had it all planned out: there was going to be dancing and booze, then, heading back to Sarah's parents' place, there was going to be more booze, sitting around the fire, talking with Sarah's parents and a few friends. It may sound a little lame to some of you, but that's how we party. As Mary's (Sarah's sister) big day approached, we noticed that Sarah's "monthly" was acting strange. I'll leave the details out, but I'll say that it was hard to determine if it had or had not arrived. Sarah was on some new medication for menstrual pain, Neproxine, and we were wondering if that was the cause of the strangeness. We tossed around the idea that she was pregnant, and determined that it was unlikely. However, we decided that if Sarah had not had her "monthly" by the night of Mary's wedding, we were going to take a pregnancy test. Obviously, we didn't want to do any boozing, if there was a baby present.

Mary's big night arrived, and everything was still unclear. Fortunately, the reception ended up being "dry." Later that night, instead of having our little party, Sarah's dad and I went on Consumer Reports, WebMD and a few other sites, to determine which pregnancy test was most accurate. Looking up pregnancy tests with your father-in-law is a strange situation to find yourself in, let me tell you. We found out that the best thing to do was to simply to get 2 tests: one for right away, and one for the morning. (Apparently there are more hormones in the morning.) Sarah took the first one that night, it came back negative. That is, until I looked at it again 15 minutes later where it showed a slight positive.

After some further googling, I discovered that it was too late to tell and that false positives often occur when looking at the test later than you're supposed to. However, I also discovered that we hadn't waited the appropriate amount of time to begin with. So, that test result was inconclusive. Rather than buying another test, or using the one designated for the morning, Sarah opted to abstain from alcohol that night and have our little party the next day.

The next morning arrived, and Sarah woke up to take the morning test. She informed me that the test was negative, and we went back to bed. A few hours later, we got up for the day, and Sarah casually mentioned that the test wasn't so clear. You see, she informed me, the line did change color but only barely. She had decided that if she was pregnant, the line would be clearer, perhaps blinking, or perhaps there'd be balloons. I decided that any color change would indicate the presence of the pregnancy hormone. Ultimately, the doctor would have to referee this match.

We scheduled an appointment with our new doctor at the AALFA Clinic (great clinic, btw!). And, as it turned out, Sarah was pregnant. It was a relief to find out for sure, but it was also terrifying. Thus began a 9 month period of near constant life-changing events, a period that isn't quite over yet. Even though the baby won't be born for another month or so, I'm a very different person than I was before the night of Mary's wedding. I've had to grow up considerably, taking on more responsibilities, making some difficult sacrifices. Yes, I was scared then, but I was also determined to make sure I was a support to Sarah throughout her pregnancy, and to continue on, growing as a husband, and growing into a father.

Dad Undaunted

First post will be short and sweet. I'm setting up this blog to chronicle my journey through fatherhood. As of right now, my wife is nearly 8 months (34 weeks) pregnant. We're preparing for our first baby, due May 9th, and we're very excited for his arrival. That's right, we're expecting a boy! I'll post more after tweaking some setting for this blog.