I know. I broke my blog. I have no idea how to go about fixing it, so, uh, bear with me here while I try to find someone who knows something about HTML and coding and WHY DID I TOUCH THAT BUTTON?!
I know. I broke my blog. I have no idea how to go about fixing it, so, uh, bear with me here while I try to find someone who knows something about HTML and coding and WHY DID I TOUCH THAT BUTTON?!
Looking at these photos makes me a little nostalgic for the days of pregnancy…when I came home from work with nothing to do but take the dog out, make dinner and make the couch my home.
Things look a little different now (you should see my stretch mark + appendix scar that makes it look like I once had surgery in a back alley) but yet they are still oh-so-good. If not filled with a lot more Spanx & spit up.
I’ll go ahead and start this out by saying if you are not a parent or a parent-to-be you’ll probably find this post a big old snooze-fest. Fair is fair and you are most obviously not obligated to stick around. Second, I’m talking about money which is tacky and rude and full of assumptions (and we all know what making an assumption makes you….) but here I go with an earth shattering revelation:
Babies are expensive yo.
Of course this is something B and I knew and considered going into it. We saw the price tags on all the gear, both necessary and not (sorry but you can’t just not buy a car seat because they cost a lot of dollars) and we know how much higher education costs since we are still paying off law school, and we talked to friends about nannies and day cares and au pairs and we started calculating how much money here and there and into this account and that.
And while I knew the basics like diapers and formula (if you are using it, we supplement with it, end of discussion) and wipes could add up I didn’t really realize just how many diapers you need. Last month? We used 260. Wipes I have no idea but so far we’ve gone through a case of Pampers wipes and we’ve made a significant dent in a Costco case of wipes since February 1. Right around the time I found myself making yet another Amazon order of diapers I decided it was time to get savvy about all these necessities and I did some serious price comparing. Down to the penny. I figured out how much formula was per ounce and how many pennies I was paying per wipe and how many cents this diaper was versus that diaper. I busted out the Ti83 ya’ll. (Amazon did the math for me, but other stores made me do my own division.) (Please note I’ve been a long time Amazon devotee, as a Prime member for years as The Namby Pamby’s “sister” since you can add 4 people to your Prime account- and I do the vast majority of my Christmas and birthday shopping on Amazon.)
And I came to the conclusion that bar none, Amazon Mom/Prime + Subscribe and Save was the way to go. I compared the following:
- Buying goods at Costco, where we have a membership ($100 a year, we will pay for this no matter what, so sunken cost)
- Buying goods at Target and grocery store
- Buying goods on Amazon, where I have Amazon Prime ($79 a year, we use this like crazy, so sunken cost)
- Buying goods on Amazon with Subscribe & Save (you save 5%)
-Buying goods on Amazon with Amazon Mom + doing a Subscribe and Save bundle of 5 or more monthly items (you save 20%)
Generally speaking I found that Costco shopping was on par with costs similar to purchasing on Amazon with Subscribe & Save bundling, however you have significantly less choice in the brands you can choose from. For instance you can buy Kirkland (Costco’s store brand diapers) for about 15 cents a diaper versus Pampers Swaddlers (considered a “premium” diaper) for 16 cents a diaper, and you can buy wipes for 3 cents a wipe at Costco (Kirkland) or on Amazon (Pampers Sensitive).
The most expensive option, by far, was just shopping at the regular grocery store. How much more expensive? For us, about $110 a month more expensive. The next option is just using Amazon to purchase as you need things, with Prime you get free shipping and it is tax free and generally has a slightly lower price…compared to the least expensive option, this was about $45 to $50 a month pricier. Sticking with Subscribe & Save bundles of five or more (or using Costco for all your needs) was the best savings. Here, let me illustrate!
Earth’s Best formula, the formula we use, is about $31 a can at the grocery store near my house. Lets say you go through a can a week (which is on the high end if you are supplementing, lower end if you are exclusively formula feeding, we fall somewhere in the middle) so you are spending about $124 a month on formula. Yikes.
(At this point I’m embarrassed by my excitement of sharing non-earth shattering money saving tips. THIS IS WHO I’VE BECOME.)
If you order it through Amazon the regular way you can get it for $26 a can. And you can see, off to the side, if you do Subscribe & Save (i.e. you tell Amazon to deliver it once a month) you can get it for $24 a can. Yup, a lot cheaper for a month’s worth, you are now paying about $100 a month. Compared to grocery store shopping, you just saved yourself a night at the movies!
But wait, you say? There is a way to save even more?
(Most of you are like “hey dummy, we figured this out a long time ago” but you know what, I’m new to this so bear with me.)
Amazon lets you create a 5 item bundle with Subscribe and Save, and if you do that, you save 20% on all the items in your bundle. So once you hit the magical “5 items set to be delivered that month” you now see this:
And suddenly the formula is almost $21 a can, which means, well, $10 a can less than the grocery store by my house.
*Fans self with dollar bills*
(Don’t even tell me that if you exclusively breast feed you can save money on formula, THANK YOU CAPTAIN OBVIOUS, but some of us need a little help and saving money on formula offsets how much I’ve spent on making breastfeeding as successful as possible.)
Worth noting, I also compared prices with Honest Company, and while I love their cute products and their environmentally friendly message, for now it isn’t for us. B just can’t handle that their diapers don’t have a wetness indicator and we can’t get quite as good of a fit with our tiny child as we can with Pampers. Their diapers are about twenty eight cents a piece, and with all my savings here, I’m paying about sixteen cents a diaper – which is substantial when you factor that by over 200 diapers a month. If you buy premium diapers at the grocery store, you will pay about the same as Honest diapers, so it can be competitive and comes with the bonus of door to door delivery.
So now I have a monthly bundle coming from Amazon – diapers, wipes, Diaper Genie refill bags, formula, some dog supplies, hand soap for the bathroom, and laundry detergent. I don’t need all of these items monthly but I can pause a delivery and I have more than 5 items in my rotation so I’m confident that I can ensure 5 items being delivered every month, to put me into the 20% savings bracket. And worth noting, with Amazon Mom you always save 20% on diapers and wipes so if that is all you need you don’t need to create a 5 item bundle. Amazon Mom does require you to be the Prime subscription holder, so I did have to shell out for my own annual account, which is fine.
And for those of you who want to save on something not-baby related? The hand soap we use is about $3.50 a bottle at Target…with all the Amazon deals factored in, I can buy a 6 pack of the soaps for $16 and have it delivered to my door. Dollar, dollar bills.
All of this fails to factor in the awesome luxury of subscription services that arrive by mail: these items just show up outside my door and don’t require me to go out and buy them, which in the city where parking is scarce and our trunk is small…well, it helps.
And thus concludes my non-sponsored, totally not earth shattering post on how much babies cost and how Amazon is my new favorite thing all over again.
I promise to never go there again.
You know the old saying…if wishes were horses, we’d be knee deep in shit beggars would ride. But my thirtieth birthday is at the end of next month and seeing as how my plan of a “long weekend in New York City” is out the window thanks to baby, baby budgets and the like, B requested I make a wish list for him. Obviously I feel inclined to put this wish list on my blog, if for no other reason than to share some super fun things I would love to own. (Please note: birthdays are not huge-big-to-dos around these parts, so while an ultimate wish list is fun and expensive, I would never expect anything on the list…but if you can’t put something fabulous on your 30th birthday wish list, where can you put it?)
Truthfully, if for my 30th birthday I can have dinner with my husband, a family outing to the farmer’s market for a fresh fruit smoothie, and a trip to get a pedicure and read trashy magazines, I’ll be pretty happy. But if wishes were horses….well, here is what I’d be riding so to speak.
By far the most expensive thing on my dream wish list…but the truth is, I’ve been tearing through mid-range food processors at a prodigious rate of speed. I love to cook and the lesser models only seem to last me a year or two before I burn out the motor doing something completely easy like grating carrots. Consumer Reports tell me this is the food processor that will still be around when I’m making 30th wedding anniversary meals.
I enjoy my morning cup of coffee more than is reasonable and I’d really love to be able to froth some milk for the top of it. Call it a poor man’s latte…but feel free to come over for a cup of the good stuff.
I’ve been using Target cake pans for years, but I know I have a lot of birthday cakes to bake in my future (my Mom always made us a homemade cake for our birthday) and I’ve coveted these cake pans for years. I’m ready to move on from my cheap pans and make some memories with these bad boys.
I’ve been looking for the perfect pair of gold sandals to wear with jeans and dresses all summer long and I’m pretty sure these are it.
I’ve been told that as Gracie gets older, stemless wine glasses become the only way to go to prevent spills and maximize the ability to toss them in the dishwasher while taking up minimal room. That and..I just like stemless wine glasses. Six of these would be entertaining perfection.
I love wearing sun hats in the summer to keep the sun off of my face and out of my eyes, but all of my sun hats have disappeared or bitten the dust. This one is perfection, although I’m partial to it in navy.
Mastering the Art of French Cooking
One day, these will be mine.
I promised myself not to start these letters with the cliche that time flies, but it does. It just does. You’ve done and grown so much in the last month, but to most of the people who meet you, you are just a tiny little baby. You are a little over eight pounds now, which was the size of some of your friends when they were born. I think you know that I want you to get lots of wear out of your newborn sized wardrobe so you are obliging me by hanging around in all the “NB” sized clothes a little longer.
You started smiling in the past few weeks, although you prefer to make people work for it. You are a wonderful little traveler- Grand Rapids, Salt Lake City and Detroit were all on your agenda this past month and you made it to and from with minimal fuss. There was an emergency purchase of a secondary Rock n’ Play at Papa and Gigi’s house in Utah so I could rock you when you were fussy, and on that trip we realized how much we both missed your Dad who couldn’t come along. You met your great-grandfather on your Dad’s side of the family when we were in Detroit and your cousin and Uncle when we were out in Salt Lake City- all of them were smitten. You celebrated your first holiday, Easter, and the good bunny was very kind and delivered you some goodies- your very first Jellycat, a soft book about a bee and his friends and a mirror for tummy time. Your grandparents also helped the bunny out with his duties and you have some new books and clothes from them- I’m telling you, you are one well dressed lady with a library to rival that of Congress.
This past month we worked on finding you a nanny for my return to work and it was a difficult process. We thought we found someone we really liked only to discover their social media account where they displayed a shocking lack of judgment on a regular basis. Let this be a warning to you – you don’t have to be tech savvy to find out how stupid people really are on the internet. We found a nanny just in the nick of time, and while I really love her I have spent a good part of this month worrying about my return to work and the impact it will have on all of our lives.
You still love bath time, music, your play mat and movement. If we put you in your stroller and go for a walk you are a pretty happy girl. On my very last day of maternity leave the weather finally obliged us and we went for a walk to the park with the dog. You took it all in with your wide, blue eyes. You still protest most diaper changes, but you stayed quiet for the incredibly complex task of diaper changes on an airplane (seriously, I’m not a large person and I could barely MOVE with the changing table down, so much so I had to open the door and set the diaper bag in the aisle) so I’ll let it go.
You got your first round of vaccinations when you were six weeks old, or at least part of them. Your thighs were not big enough for any more shots so we go back soon for the rest of your vaccines….like mother like daughter I like to fantasize. Seriously though, you are a tiny peanut, although some chubby little rolls are starting to make an appearance on your thighs much to my great pleasure.
When I was pregnant with you people told me you’d have your own little preferences and to be ready to try lots of things- sleeping blankets, bottles, pacifiers, swings or bouncy chairs. The only thing you really have a strong opinion on is your pacifier (Soothies only, we have a bag full of rejects) and we have a strong opinion on your sleep sack/swaddling (Halo Sleep Sack with Swaddle flaps- easy for late night diaper changes and requires little brain power to get you swaddled) so now we have three different kinds of bottles ready to confuse anyone who tries to put one together (does this O ring go with this bottle or this bottle or, oh hell, I don’t know…) and you like your swing and your bouncy chair and your Rock n Play. Our house is over run with infant containment devices, which is partly why sooner rather than later we will be moving.
The dog continues to accept you as one of the family although he has taken to crawling out of the room when you are crying and we can’t seem to fix your problem fast enough. He keeps my pillow warm when I get up in the middle of the night to feed you and knows that when the stroller comes out there is a 50/50 chance he gets to come along and he waits by the door hoping it is a family affair.
I can’t wait to see what your future holds baby girl. You can grow up to be anything.
Love,
Mama
Two Months
8 pounds 14 ounces
Likes: walks in the stroller, car rides, bath time, music, your play mat
Dislikes: diaper changes, gas, the hours of 5 to 8 pm
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