More victims of the recession: prospective parents

This coming New Year's was supposed to start with a bang for me -- literally. It was going to be the year my husband and I were finally going to make that baby. When we first discussed the time line a couple of years ago, my clock wasn't ticking that fast and 2009 seemed like an ideal year to start. But then 2008 didn't turn out to be the ideal year for our finances. My income as a freelance writer came in at a slower pace, and even though my husband had graduated from school, job interviews are few and far between. So for New Year's, we'll open up a bottle of (cheap) champagne, but that will probably be the only cork that pops.

Our situation is far from unique. I found this Los Angeles Times story profiling couples who say the recession is forcing them to put off baby-making for the time being. It's nothing new to put off having having kids during hard financial times, but it was hard to determine how to come up with the money to raise a kid properly even before Wall Street and the housing market tanked. College tuition is the ultimate balloon payment, of course, but more and more parents I knew are only focused on private school for K-16.