Financially Faithful

With IVF treatment creeping up on us, Aaron and I have constantly been looking at our finances. Where will we get this extra money, especially now as we just started making almost $400 monthly payments for Aaron's student loans? How can we find this extra money when my paycheck is almost entirely eaten up by our mortgage payment? How on earth is this possible when we spend nearly $250 on gas alone each month for Aaron's commute?

But God!

I love those two words together!

God presented IVF to us as an option to us at just the right time...just as both Aaron and I were receiving our annual raises. Aaron, as a teacher, is contracted to receive a $1,000 to $1,800 raise each year (until maxed out, of course). Being a new teacher, his raise was on the lower end of that spectrum, but we thought that would for sure help.

But, apparently, the monthly premium we're having to fork out for our insurance also went up. In fact, our monthly out-of-pocket expense went up nearly the exact amount of Aaron's monthly raise. Okay...that's fine...at least we're not losing any monthly income. But still, how are we going to find that extra money for our IVF payments???

Well, I got my raise today! And, it sure was a lot more than I expected (thanks to my overly generous boss!). I broke it down and it ended up begin about a $1.25/hour raise (before taxes). Awesome! :)

Still, that additional money wasn't quite enough.

But God!

A couple hours after I get my paycheck, I receive an e-mail from Aaron who said that a person from Merced County Office of Education (MCOE) contacted him and said he's qualified for step up in the salary schedule!

For those of you who don't know, teachers fall under usually four pay scales, and all of them are based on the teacher's post-graduate education. For Aaron's teaching district, the categories are BA, BA + 45 (or MA), BA+60 (or MA+15), or BA+75 (or MA+30). Aaron was in the second category last year (since he had over 45 units), but with all the coursework he's completed since then, he ended up having 62 post-Bachelor's units!

And get this, Aaron and I had done the math over and over again. We thought he had 59 units this entire time!!! We were both pretty disappointed he was only one unit short from the raise, but the fools that we are, made, what turned out to be, a WONDERFUL mistake!

So, with this jump up the pay scale comes a $2,000 annual raise! That's a good amount per month, and that is God's way of opening the door a little bit wider to our IVF.

God is so good, isn't He? So, we're hoping and praying this is enough to bring us the chance of using IVF to bring us our baby(ies). We're still not sure, since we have no idea what our monthly IVF payments will be, but today we became one step closer to making this a reality! :)