Sense to Save

A diaper service for Pittsburgh

Well whaddya know? Turns out, there IS a diaper service for the Pittsburgh area.

I was convinced there wasn’t. I searched the Yellow Pages. I did an extensive Google search. Nada.

I got in touch with a lady who sells cloth diapers in town, and she told me that A Little Behind delivers diapers to Pittsburgh.

This company is based in Morgantown, West Virginia.

They’ll deliver 80 diapers per week for $20, which works out to being about $0.25 per diaper. For less money, you can get 40 diapers per week for $16 (about $0.40 per diaper). You can get a different amount of dipes at $17, $18, or $19 price points. It includes prefolds, diaper covers (I believe the site said they are Pro Wraps), diaper pail, and deodorizing disk.

I’ll likely try using this service for a few weeks to ease ourselves into cloth diapering. It seems like a great way to try it out without buying a bunch of diapers initially. And by then, I’ll have a sense of how many daily diaper changes we’ll be going through, so I can better gauge how often I’d need to do laundry if I did it myself.

We’ll see how it goes, and then decide if we’d prefer to stick with the service or if it would be better to buy a batch of diapers and wash them ourselves.

Just wanted to let you Pittsburghers know that there is indeed a cloth diapering service for us!

Undisclosing our money

My mom wanted to caution me about disclosing how much money we have in savings, and I think she made a great point.

She recognized that I keep my “emergency savings” chart in my sidebar to help my personal accountability, and also because I love making progress and having a visual reminder of it. Some of you have told me that you’re inspired by seeing my savings grow. It can be a fun thing!

But, my blog isn’t an anonymous one. Many family members read it, as do plenty of friends (hi, y’all!).

I have wonderful friends and family, and I’ve never had anyone give me grief about money. And I’d like for it to stay that way.

My mom worried that if folks knew how much money we had, they might think we should spend it in certain ways. For example, they might think we can afford to fly over for a visit whenever we pleased, or take an expensive vacation with them, or buy them pricey presents, or lend them money, etc. I doubt my family would do that, though.

Our emergency fund is for emergencies only. End of story. But maybe others won’t see it that way.

So, since my blog isn’t anonymous, I’ve decided to adjust my bar graph to reflect only the percentage of our completed emergency fund. I don’t want to get rid of it entirely, because it does motivate me.

Even though I like to be open about personal finance, I realize that such an open attitude can actually cause problems, and it’s just not worth it.

Savings accounts need a specific purpose

In an earlier post, I mentioned that for you to actually be saving money, you need to physically move money to a savings account.

Lulugal made an interesting comment:

I CAN say that I save money when I buy something on sale because my money is in an interest bearing account. I have all my money in ING, most in the savings and some in the interest bearing checking account.

I use (cash back) credit cards to buy things and then send the money from the interest bearing account to pay for the purchase before any interest comes due.

I don’t have to ‘go put the money’ I ’save’ from a reduced purchase in the bank because it is already in the bank earning interest. If the item is on sale then the difference is already in my savings account because then I would just transfer the smaller amount to go as a payment.

What do you say to that? :-)

Lulugal, to that, I say, “If it works for you, cool.”

But for me, that wouldn’t work at all. My savings accounts need specific purposes–and maybe yours do, too, and it just wasn’t clear to me by your comment.

This is what works best for my budgeting style.

If I just had one checking account and one broad savings account, I would have a difficult time actually saving for goals. There wouldn’t be a specific purpose for my savings. It would just exist, ready for me to grab if I wanted to.

Instead, I need to give a purpose for each account.

I absolutely need to have a separate account for emergency savings and nothing else. Once money is put into that account, I cannot tap it unless a true emergency arises.

I have a savings sub account for car insurance. Each month, I deposit about $60 in that account. In November when my next premium is due, I’ll have the money ready to pay in full.

Once our emergency fund is complete, I’ll open more savings sub accounts, and I’ll give them purposes such as: Vacation, Gifts, Second car, House down payment, etc.

It’s great that your money is earning interest. But unless those dollars have a specific savings purpose, I would have a much more difficult time saving for specific goals.

I recognize that your personal finance habits are personal to you, and it sounds like it’s working for you. I just need my accounts to be a bit more focused.