Sense to Save

I have a blog? What?

Wow! I have been a mom for a little over a week now. It blows my mind. I haven’t forgotten about this blog, but I’ve got to admit, it’s pretty hard to think about saving money (or anything else) when I have a sweet little boy to stare at all day.

So far, things are going well. Thank you all for your sweet comments on my last post!

We’ve had a few things to purchase this week, including newborn-sized diapers. When I talked about stocking up on diapers before my baby was born, people cautioned me against buying too many newborn sized diapers. Some moms were given newborn sized ones at the hospital to take home.

That is reasonable advice.

However, at our hospital, they only had size 1s to give out. Those were waaay too big on my baby. Jonathan’s birth weight was 6 lbs. 5 oz. and when we left the hospital, he was 5 lbs. 11 oz. I figured he’d be at least 7.5 to 8 pounds!

I’m doing my b(r)est to frugally plump him up, but I do think he’ll be in the tiny size for a few more weeks. We’ll see. At any rate, this wasn’t something I could anticipate. We’ll just have to deal with it and use whatever coupons we have on hand and keep tabs on the diaper deals of the week at Baby Cheapskate.

I signed up for the rewards program from Pampers and thanks to Money Saving Methods, I scored 14 bonus points to start us off. I know that it’ll take me awhile to earn anything cool (a box of Cheerios is worth 50 points, I think) but every little bit helps!

My husband picked up a few more receiving blankets (what were we thinking when I only had four on hand to start out??). We don’t have a ton of newborn sized clothing, but we do have enough. His umbilical cord is still attached so we’re avoiding onesies for now. Instead, we dress him in tiny t-shirts, put a sleeper on top of that, and swaddle him in those receiving blankets.

While we have a bunch of meals in the freezer, we have also eaten restaurant food. On the way home from the hospital, we stopped at a Wendy’s drive-thru. Yum. And, on the way home from the pediatrician, we picked up a pizza.

I managed to get out of the house alone and made a quick trip to the grocery. I went to the nearest one, which happens to be a Giant Eagle. It’s a pricey place to shop. If I thought I had enough time to make it to Aldi, I could have saved a good $20 or so.

Oh, and our electric bill is about to get insane. While pregnant, I kept our apartment at 63-68 degrees. Now, it’s at 72 and it will be until Johnny gets much bigger. What can I say, the boy has no fat? I don’t want him to be a popsicle.

I am not a bit concerned about these little expenses. We knew that life would be a bit chaotic in the first few weeks (months? years?) of our baby’s life. Getting through it while maintaining our sanity is a bit more important than saving the most money possible this month.

And really, I think we’re doing pretty well for first-timers!

Happy birthday to my baby!

Jonathan is here! He was born at 4:24 a.m. on Dec. 20 and weighs 6 lbs. 5 oz., 20″ long and doing well! I’ll write out my birth story and post it on my personal blog soonish.

We’re so in love!

A little trick for weighing large packages

Earlier this month, I mentioned a web site to help you compare shipping costs.  When shipping a package, you’ll want to know how much it weighs so you can know how to get the best deal on sending it.

But what if the box is so large that you can’t see the weight on your bathroom scale at home?

Simple.

Get on the scale and weigh yourself. Then, grab the package and get back on the scale. Find the difference between the two numbers, and you should have your package’s weight.

I went to the site and found that for my three packages, it would be about $5 cheaper to go with UPS. But, I’d have to drive further than my post office, deal with evening rush hour traffic and stand in line for who knows how long.

Since I live superclose to a post office, I decided to drive by it to check out the line. There wasn’t one. Yeah, I could have saved $5, but it would have cost me at least a half an hour, if not more.

To me, my time was worth more than that $5 today.