Daddy Financials

Well, after about a year or so of reading in the financial blogosphere, I have decided to join the party. I am a 28 year old husband and father, trying to make a better and more fulfilling life for my family. I have a very loving and caring wife who is as smart as she is beautiful and we have a baby girl who seems to have a much older woman trapped inside of her. I will try to post pics at a later date, once I get better acquainted with this blogging thing.

We have been together for over 2 years and living together for a little over a year and we have plans on getting a house together in the next 3 years. We are working on getting our first car (used of course) in the next few months. Slowly but surely we are working on becoming a fully functional and independent family. Right now we still gets lots of help from both of our families, not financial but with babysitting and rides to the supermarket or borrowing a car for little trips.

My finances were shot a few years ago, being Hispanic and from the Bronx it seemed like a birthright. I did not really care until I realized that I could not get a loan for anything and that my credit card debt was more than half of my yearly salary. When I turned 24, I started on working on paying everything down and working on something of an emergency fund. When I got together with the woman who would become my wife, everything went into overdrive. She motivates me to do bigger and better things each and every day. She is 6 years my junior, but she has the mind and eloquence every husband dreams of.... shes pretty hot too :)

I am proud to say that the only debt we have left are a small amount on Target card we had to get to pick up some things for the baby, a collection agency I am still paying off( I still have about $1000 left) and my wife's student loan(she is due to graduate in the next few years).

I now have a Roth IRA set up with T Rowe Price, my 401 K is funded so I get the full company match, I have an emergency fund set up with ING (not fully funded but I'm still working on it), and i also opened up a seperate savings account(ING)and a 529 for my baby girl through NY State which Vanguard manages.

It took a lot of work to get this far. I had to work 3 jobs while still going to school full time just to get out of the hole I had dug. I know have my BA in Finance, proud graduate of Baruch College in New York, I've gotten my credit score up to a much more respectable score of around 580(up from 425 with several delinquent accounts 3 years ago), and I have somewhat of a cushion to fall back on in case of financial hardships. I know I have even more work ahead of me, but now I have my wife to help me along the way. Cheesy as it sounds, she really is my partner in everything I do and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I hope to use this blog to chronicle my family's financial journey and keep track of our goals and accomplishments. I will sprinkle more bits about our past hardships with time, and I will go into more detail on our goals as well(first would be the car of course and then getting that credit score finally over the 600 barrier). Our main goal is to provide a better life for our baby girl than we had, while still enjoying married life to its fullest.

I would also like to thank Single Ma over at http://singlemomandmoney.blogspot.com/ for her inspiration, I'm not a single parent but I understand how much her daughter motivates her now, and also Jonathan over at http://www.mymoneyblog.com/ for all of his very useful and always up to date info. You guys have both helped me more than you know.

And all the other blogs I've read, thanks and I hope to be as insightful as all you guys.
Any and all comments/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
If your wondering about the pink background, its my baby's favorite color :)

Baby I love you and I hope to make you as proud of me as I am of you.