Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Long Thoughts on Being Money Savvy

On 8/13, E at Waiting for Baby posted about an article about ways to save money on baby care. It’s topical to anyone expecting, and is something that’s been on my mind ever since the Order certifying us as adoptive parents came through. What to get, what to do, how much to spend, how to save money doing it?

Another blogger I came across – forget where, sorry, I was blog cruising – was talking about Craigslist for various items. The article linked above suggests Freecycle, which I’ve not explored. I also have been half-heartedly browsing Amazon... and occasionally EBay, even though EBay’s kind of lost its way and doesn’t have the deals it used to.

So E and some other thrifty pals in Blogland set me on a trail. When I get a chance, I cruise Craigslist and Amazon and other places. I have poked around at Target, at BRU as I’ll explain below, and there’s a Buy Buy Baby opening in the vicinity soon (at least they’re honest about their business plan!) but have scrupulously avoided Wally World which I despise for baby stuff, but I think the better deals are at online stores or via Craiglist as long as I can find things I don't have to pay shipping for.

I’m not going to go crazy. Some things must be bought new – the car seat, for example; other things I’d prefer new, such as the crib. But I’m not going to spend the equivalent of half a year’s pay to stock baby clothes, furniture, fripperies and other items. The baby isn’t going to care.

Pardon the morbid comparison, but it’s the same thing with spending beaucoup on funerals and memorials – these things are really for the living, as my cousin said to my nephew at my mother’s funeral, not the dead. She was right – rituals such as these are not only to remember those who have passed, but to make us feel better about the loss.

So (in a really weak comparison, but you’ll get the point), this trend of blowing insane amounts of money on nurseries in the excitement, it’s easy to forget that the baby won’t care; the paint and the printed name on the wall and the other fripperies are really for us, the expectant parents and expectant families. And, to a point, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s an exciting time, a hopeful time, and it’s a really wonderful feeling to prepare for the arrival of a baby, especially if it’s been a long and difficult time coming. But the baby is just not going to care if the paint is from Ralph Lauren or from Valspar, or if the bedding has some trendy logo/pattern/designer instead of simple mainline Gerber stuff from Target. We’re the ones who notice, not them.

Baby clothes and shoes are especially a rip off, since the kid only can wear things for such a short time before they’re outgrown. Even when a teen, I snickered at those who bought baby Nike shoes for their infant; seriously? $60 on a pair of shoes the child will outgrow in a matter of weeks? Hell no. I’m going to Craigslist or Freecycle that stuff. Naturally, there will be various outfits and things that will be new, but for the everyday 3P (poop, pee, puke) Parade, why blow crazy amounts of money on stuff that will just get trashed?

That’s just my take. My Scots blood rises at the complete rips that a lot of baby items truly are. I didn’t have half this crap when I was a kid and I did just fine. I’ll bet you didn’t either.
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The other night, when he couldn’t sleep, DH was trying to tire his brain by hunting down some stuff. He surprised me by saying that he even looked at baby furniture items and found some screaming deals (I was glad he did this because he now knows what things cost). He did Craigslist and the other usual stuff, but he has a talent for finding coupons and what I call partnership deals – for example, if one finds something on Overstock.com via Bi.ng, and Bi.ng has a code or coupon, there were things he found where he could get anywhere from $50-$100 or some crazy percentage off. I was really impressed. It tells me he’s now thinking about it, and thinking smart. Yeah, baby!
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Earlier this week, I was at BRU looking over my sister-in-law’s registry (the younger of my two SILs on my side of the family – I refer to her on the Alter Ego as YSIL). I have managed to avoid being in one prior to this, and I’m so glad I have never been there. What a load of garbage! It’s a bunch of halfheartedly stocked crap. Oh, I don’t mean that parents don’t need a crib or a baby clothes or other things, but there is just SO MUCH CRAP that nobody needs and are just there as emotional landmines to make money off of.

I will give my YSIL credit – she didn’t go crazy. Oh, of course there are some fripperies – everyone deserves fripperies and fun – but the vast majority of the things on her list are extremely common sense things. You know, such as several sets of crib sheets, a middle of the road bouncer that caught my eye as a future purchase for ourselves... nothing outrageous or extravagant.

I’ll get her and the baby something on her registry, but otherwise I’m going to stay far, far away from BRU. Yuck.
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Even before said article, I was thinking as soon as we were certified, and more so when I dropped off our profile the other day, what is it that we absolutely need before the arrival of a child? The catch is, of course, is that our age range is from newborn to four, with no preference to gender, even though I’ve made it clear to SW that younger is preferred (she’s in the same boat). So...

Hmmm.

· Car seat, without a doubt. Can’t bring a child home without one. Must be age progressive. Can’t be girly or boyish. It’s one of the things we have to buy new; used is not an option.
· 4-1 crib, and need to remember to get the railings, of course sold separately – so that no matter the age of the child, we have a bed option. We’d have to run out and get a mattress and whatnot, but at least we have the bed frame. Gently used is fine, so I’m hunting for a decent deal. I’m stumped as to what color/finish to get, though.

So, my wise friends in the blogosphere, what else would we NEED other than the obvious safety items such as outlet covers (already bought some) and cabinet locks?

We can’t buy diapers, bottles, clothes, bed linens, or anything else right now. They’re all age dependent.

Rats. I’m stumped.
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In other news, DH has talked me out of repainting the room for the moment – the one he still occupies as an office, of course – the one he never finished painting. It’s in a very pale green, a bare tint, which is fine. It’s semi-gloss at least, not flat as I originally thought. And God knows that in a child’s room, it needs to be at least semi-gloss (it sticks in my mind because of the story my mom told me when my #2 brother was an inquisitive toddler who liked to shed his diaper back in the day... and the wall adjacent to his crib was brick... you can figure out the rest!). Ugh.

And I have to call an electrician. We have the ironing board in what would be the kid’s room, mostly because there isn’t an outlet in our closet. Every other room has a zillion outlets, but our huge walk-in closet has none at all. So we’ll have an electrician come out and punch an outlet into our closet and take the iron and ironing board out of there.

Once that’s set up, DH said he’ll take his crap out of there and relocate into the same room as we had a few years ago, and the deal I made was that he can rearrange the home office any way he likes. When he gets his crap out and the electrical is done, he’ll touch up the room... and I’m kind of hoping he can’t match the color so that it has to be completely repainted. I’m evil, I know. Ha.

Then, once the touch up and all the trim (which also never was completed) is done, DH is going to replace the ceiling fan in that room – the current one is a piece of crap that makes all sorts of noises. I want to see if he can put a dimmer on the light portion of the fan so that during nighttime issues, we don’t turn on a blazing light.

I purchased a cordless shade to put inside the window case (DH asked why; “Naptime,” I said; “Oh. Yeah. That’s right.” ha-ha), then make my own roll-up curtains. I have a book that I’ll post the title of that gives you simple instructions for projects. It’s by Caroline Smith, but I don’t remember the title of the book – I’m bad that way. Anyway, thinking of maybe yellow or green polka dots. Maybe yellow on the outside, green on the inside liner? I dunno. I’ll figure something out.
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On a complete tangent, I think I’ll suggest to DH to take a parenting class. Naturally I’d go with him. He needs to learn the basics of infant/child care.
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On yet another tangent, and semi-related to M’s posts re her in-laws at Plaid with Polka Dots, I have not actively involved the in-laws at all in the process thus far. DH hasn’t said much to them either. Oh, they know we’re adopting (and have been oddly standoffish about it), I think they know we’re certified, but I don’t think they know our profile is essentially active.

Why?

Let me give you an example of why they drive me insane. Last week, DH went out with his friend to have a Guys Night Out. I think they went to see the GI Joe movie. He had his phone turned off on purpose – it’s an electronic leash to his work and he didn’t want it. He keeps it on him in case of emergency, but it’s turned off.

FIL & MIL were at a California beach in the same time frame. On a particular night last week, every fifteen minutes, the home phone rang. Every. Fifteen. Minutes. That is not an exaggeration. If the home phone rang, you know he was hitting Dan's phone, too. Since FIL declined to leave a message, it meant the subject matter it wasn’t anything earth shattering. I don't answer the phone because I refuse to reward that behavior; answering makes it worse. Found out the day after that the incessant calling was because his AOL wasn’t working. For criminy sake! I wanted to kill him.

But FIL does this every night, this “war dialing.” It drives me insane.

And I don’t think I could bear to deal with them calling every fifteen minutes/half hour every night to bug me/us about updates. I don't want to think about when we actually have a kid, how much worse it might get. Don’t suggest we talk to them about knocking it off – we have, many times over the years, to no avail, so I have chosen to remain silent on the matter at the moment.
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In my next post, I’m going to take a cue off of a post from Plaid with Polka Dots yesterday. It’s in draft form and I’ll probably post it later this week so it stays somewhat relevant. Peace!

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