With Spawn on the way, Matt and I have begun to look more closely at our spending habits and ways to cut them back. Babies are expensive you know.
We always knew we went out to eat more than we should. It's becoming more frequent for neither of us to feel like cooking at the end of the day. This will now be reserved for special occassions or the once in a while brunch. No, we haven't defined the "once in a while" yet. We just started this process.
We are also looking at our other bills. I know our grocery bill will need to change, especially since we will not be eating out so much. I feel there are ways to greatly slash this bill. We will be working from a weekly menu and sticking with it. I am going to begin to clip coupons from the news paper (and hope I remember to use them) and start looking at buying in bulk.
When it comes to getting ready for the baby, we have found yard sales, second hand stores and sale watching are great helpers. At one yard sale, we bought quite a bit of clothing, a bouncy seat, infant tub, bibs and burping cloths that we spent all of $20 on. All I have to do is put a bit of elbow grease into cleaning them up. I felt like I scored. As much I would love buy brand new baby things and smother my first child in the best of the best, I come from a large family and know that an infant will quickly outgrow most anything before we get our moneys worth from it.
Of course, we can always do things such as cut off the internet, the cable TV, the lights but I refuse to live like a hobbit and would rather look at other ways to save money first.
With that being said, what ideas, thoughts, or suggestions do you have? Do you have any websites that you visit for coupons or making extra money that you would like to share? Any baby swap group? Bring it on - I'm willing to consider it all.
CROP.jpg)
3 comments:
Come over here and take everything you need that my kids are too old for.
Also - you won't need as many clothes as you think. The baby showers will cover you early and hand-me downs will get you later.
Lest you forget those fantastic & magical words: Baby Shower. When you register, be thoughtful for stuff you may not use in the first few months, but longer term too. And those registries are priceless for people like Fischy and I who are childless and have little to no idea what people with Spawn-to-be need.
If you're going the formula route, sign up for which ever brand you plan on using, similac or enfamil are good. Enfamil sends $5 off coupons almost weekly, Similac is pretty good about sending $5 off coupons too. Go to their websites and sign up. You can do that for diapers too, sign up for coupons. We use Luvs or Target brand, they are the cheapest and they work just as good as other more expensive brands.
I think that we rotate about 5 or 6 outfits with Cash and we usually don't change his outfits but once a day, if he spits up a bit, wipe it off and so what, obviously a massive blow out requires a new change of clothes, but otherwise we rotate a few outfits. Like the other ladies said you get tons and tons of stuff from a shower. So you may want to wait and see what you don't get and then buy some stuff, just to save you some $. I just bought my 1st outfit for Cash a week ago. Plus if you have any friends that have a girl that have saved their clothes borrow them, then you'll never have to buy clothes, or very few...we've done that too!
Post a Comment