Jennifer: Thanks for the welcome! ^_^ Wow, yeah, I wouldn't know what we'd do if DH was working for himself as well! I think it's been "nice" to hear that you end up managing. I know it would be nice for everything to be "perfect", but I'm thinking that you just need to work with what you've got. I hope I can convince DH that this is possible!
Looking back, we wouldn't change anything as to DD1's arrival timing. We look at friends who did wait until their budget/finances were in order (not all, but a couple) and they found that since they were a bit older while the house was there, the baby just wouldn't come.

The stress of TTC when older for them well and truly outweighed the stress we had from juggling our finances. And we are financially in a good place now, whereas they can't get the family (or size of family) they wanted so badly. (I should add, this was not friends who took longer to find their mate, or had other factors come into play, just those who put it off to have everything perfectly in place).

It's all relative, if having children is a priority for you, plan your life around that. Things will fall into place! Especially since you're considering this so carefully.