Family Financial Planning

My wife and I are expecting our first child and the conversation of how to manage our finances comes up frequently. We have received numerous free magazines and books on parenting and they all seem to reference finances. Maybe I am just nervous about it so I notice these articles more, but adding another family member, even if they only weigh 8 pounds seems to carry the possibility of reeking utter havoc on our cash flow. So, what the heck am I supposed to do? We could just submit and open up a credit card at Crate & Barrel for kids and buy a new Suburban to drive around that 8 lb family member and their 2 tons of stuff. Maybe that is not the right plan. I thought there must be a better way so I did some research and found some interesting ideas:

Get a financial plan started and begin following it. Insurance, tax planning, 529 plan for college and definitely a will. http://www.forbes.com/personalfinance/2005/04/15/cx_sr_0415married.html
Interesting stat in this article, not sure where it came from or how accurate, 75% of Americans don't have a financial planner, which I take to mean they probably don't have most of the things listed in the article either.

For those of you that are still working on the budget piece, here is a great spreadsheet from this site. Looks simple and easy to use. http://www.finance.cch.com/tools/fammonbudget_m.asp
If this is not right for you, a budget is a must it seems.

Also, we just discovered this from Quicken, not sure if it is new or not but we are starting to use it for our medical expenses, which are going way up! http://quicken.intuit.com/healthcare-management/medical-expense-software.jhtml

Last piece of advice that I found that I liked came from good friends that have a 2 year old son. They are recent immigrants to the US and have worked very hard to grab their piece of the American dream and it definitely came through pinching some pennies. They started buying and stock piling things like diapers and formula months before the kid came. They bought in small quantities so that the hit to their finances was spread out and not so sudden.

Anyway, now we just need to make sure our new family member shows up not much later than their December 29th due date, my brother the CPA is cheering for the tax credit!

Devin