Savings – Page 9 – Frugal Living

The Original Happy Meal

August 7, 2014 by Andrew Leave a Comment

August is National Breastfeeding month and we have our own little duo that is happily participating.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, or AAP, recommends exclusively breastfeeding for the first 6 months and then continuing to breastfeed with the possibility of supplemental foods until 12 months of age.

According to the CDC’s 2014 report card, the average number of American babies that are breastfed at any point in their lives is 79.2%. By 6 months of age, the likelihood that a baby is being put to the breast at any time of the day reduces down to 49.4%. At 6 months the number of exclusively breastfed babies, those that eat nothing but breast milk, is a little less than one out of five (18.8%).

Clearly there is a bit of a gap between the AAP recommendation of 100% for EBF, exclusively breast fed, and the actual reported number of 18.8% and that in my mind is the point of having a breastfeeding month. Formula companies have an advertising budget and can run tv spots, boobs can’t. So consider this post our advertisement for the original happy meal.

For starters, it helps to move past some of America’s prudishness. Boobs, boobs, boobs, boobs, boobs!!! There, I said it. Women have them for two reasons. 1.) to signal that they can bear and raise children, and 2.) to feed the children that they bear. Thankfully my wife has no such prudishness and will happily feed our son when he is hungry despite where we may be. Take this park bench for example!

Or how about the backseat of a car (don’t worry, it was parked)

Hike or no hike, it doesn’t matter.

What about when moms not around? Here is our stash of pumped milk before Shae’s maternity leave ended.

Three months later and that supply has been all used up so now we are toeing a fine line of pumping supply and demand. Frugal Boy hasn’t quite reached 6 months yet, so the chances that we will start giving one or two feedings a day of formula are creeping up. Will we make it into that elite club of 1/5 that EBF to the recommended age of 6 months? Not likely, but we got pretty close.

Even partial breastfeeding confers a myriad of benefits including enhanced brain development and decreased sickliness. It was very tempting to throw in the towel at the hospital when Frugal Boy was hungry and the milk supply hadn’t kicked in yet. Another period of difficulty was when maternity leave ended and we had to transition to bottle feeding breast milk. In my opinion those are probably the two biggest traps that grab 4/5 moms.

Now that Frugal Boy is closing in on 6 months and has his first tooth, we have experimented a bit with solids. Here he is having baby oatmeal for the first time.

Mmmmm

We still haven’t given him a daily feeding of solids and he doesn’t seem to mind.

A little while back one of our friends proudly stated that their one month old baby slept 7 hours straight that night. I can guarantee you that baby is formula fed. Breast milk is easily digestible and no sooner is it in that little tummy it is being processed and used up. The result is that Frugal Boy still wakes several times every night to feed. So why do we sacrifice so much sleep? For starters, Frugal Boy weighed in on the bathroom scale this morning at 19.4 pounds. That is the equivalent to an A or A+ for his age. He is a very happy and intelligent boy. Finally, we are saving a ton of money by not buying formula. Do formula fed babies score A’s on growth charts and developmental milestones, sure they do! Is that something we want to do? Absolutely not if we can avoid it.

If you breastfed your babies thank you! If you are currently breastfeeding, keep it up! If you tried and switched, thanks for giving it a go! If you weren’t considering it at all, learn more about the benefits to both mom and baby!

A Little Scare

July 15, 2014 by Andrew 1 Comment

I was driving down the alley last week to pick up Frugal Boy from the babysitter when out of no where a loud boom emitted from the front end of the car. Shocked, I hit the brake and put it into park, then quickly turned the ignition off. A couple of framing carpenters working nearby had also been startled and one of my neighbors who happened to be out came running over. Together we looked underneath the car to see what had fallen off or what was dragging.

Our cursory glance did not reveal any smoking gun, only a piece of curved metal that had sheared/snapped off, and since I still needed to pick up Frugal Boy, I decided to try and get the car back into its parking space. The car shaked and shuttered while in slow reverse but it covered the short distance.

Later that evening after letting the question simmer in the back of my mind I had an idea of what it might be. A quick check later and I had found the culprit.

The front driver’s side spring coil had blown out. The giant metal spring works along with the strut to form a critical component of a cars suspension system. That suspension system turns pot holes and speed bumps from jarring impacts to soft bumps. A common misconception is that shocks and struts are the same thing. While they perform the same function, smoothing out your ride, they work slightly differently.

Some cars have struts on the front and shocks on the back while others have struts or shocks on the front and back. Either way, you have to replace A with A and B with B.

Shocks and struts should always be replaced in pairs. Since the front drivers side broke, I also needed to replace the intact (I wouldn’t go so far as to say “functioning”) passenger strut.

Removal was surprisingly easy. Not including the wheel lug nuts, there were a total of 5 bolts to remove for each strut.

sorry for the blurry photo, it was starting to get dark outside.

One of my neighbors was impressed that I knew how to do the replacement. I let him in on my little secret. I watched the first 4 minutes of this youtube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEaevAxA8Gc

While the video goes on and on about coil compression and the possibility of maiming yourself, I opted for the safer and easier route and just purchased a preassembled strut+coil.

To my astonishment, the cheapest retailer that I found for the two preassembled struts wasn’t my local NAPA store, or Autozone, or Advanced Auto Parts. It was Amazon! By waiting 5-8 days for free shipping, I was able to save $120 over NAPA, the only brick and mortar in town that had the part in stock.

The grand total was $200 in parts ($100 per side) and after using an Amazon gift card and some credit card points I had knocked the out of pocket cost down to $166. Labor took me a total of 4 hours, two to disassemble and two to reassemble.

For a little comparison, back in January of 2013 I took our other car into a nationally operated chain garage to replace the struts (on the front) and shocks (on the rear). The front ended up costing us $467. $112 of that was labor and the other $355 was parts. Amazon has those same parts for $258. If I had done that job myself, I would have saved the labor and price part difference for a total of $209. For those of you saying your time is worth a lot, in my case it worked out to $28/hour and that’s because I am an amateur and have to waste time finding the tool I just put down.

Conclusion

By diagnosing and fixing the problem myself, I saved about 45% vs giving up and calling a mechanic. The difficulty level is low and the amount of tools needed is also fairly simple. I used a

jack
two jack stands
two ratchet wrenches
3 sockets sized 15mm, 17mm, and 19mm?
a cheater bar (basically a really long wrench to give you leverage)
a pair of needle nose pliers (to help with a brake line clip)

The biggest and most important tool in your toolbox is confidence. A great way to gain confidence is to start with smaller, simpler jobs such as filling the windshield wiper fluid, replacing wiper blades, and changing the oil.

21st Century Diapering – Part 1

June 26, 2014 by Andrew 2 Comments

In this three part series, we will look at the myriad of choices that parents new and seasoned alike can choose from to keep their little one’s bums squeaky clean.

In case the title wasn’t enough to tip you off, this series will include a considerable discussion of poop. If that isn’t your thing, you should probably turn back now.

Okay, now that we have weeded out the faint of heart, let’s talk about poop. Everyone pees and poops, and if they don’t, something is seriously wrong with them and they should probably go talk to a doctor. Babies are little people too, and because they don’t have the motor skills, cognitive ability, stature, and a wide variety of other prerequisites necessary for using commodes like the rest of the civilized world, that means we need to wrap their little bottoms in something.

A long time ago..

in the 1800s parents would use squares of linen and cotton folded and safety pinned to keep solids and liquids from dribbling out. Not much changed in the following decades in diaper technology until the 1940s when the first disposable insert came along. It fitted inside the normal cloth diaper shell and reduced the amount of laundering required.

The Safe-T Di-Dee diaper was a breakthrough in 1950 due to its patented use of snaps instead of safety pins but it was too little too late. Major companies such as Procter and Gamble and Johnson and Johnson began to aggressively target the diaper market in order to expand their product and bottom lines. By the 1960s fully disposable diapers were making major head waves into the marketplace. The 70s and 80s continued this momentum until disposables held a staggering 95% of the diaper market.

Consumers loved disposable diapers for their no mess, no fuss, and time savings. I even read one analysis that claimed the rapid adoption was due in part to the burgeoning Women’s Rights movement. Mom’s that switched to disposable diapers had more free time to pursue their interests, and disposables were so easy to use that even dads could change them.

By the 1990s cloth diapers, once the de facto standard, had been sidelined to the fringe community of freegans and hippies. The occasional parent would craft his/her own stash of custom cloth diapers or use the tried and true cloth squares and safety pins.

20th Century Winner

According to WebMD, the average child potty trains between 22 and 30 months of age. For shits (hehe) and giggles let’s play with some numbers and see how much money it takes 95% of parents to diaper their child.

A short analysis

I am going to use 25 months as the age of potty training. I chose that number based on the aforementioned 22 month lower age boundary plus an additional three months for the potty training to be complete (3 was another number given by WebMD).

Another variable that I am going to cut out of the equation is the cost of wipes. You will see why later in the series.

Disposable diapers range widely in price due to three main factors:

Brand
Unit Count
Size

For this analysis, I am going to “shop” at Walmart and use the largest unit count packages in order to get the best value. For brands, I will use Pampers as my name brand and Parent’s Choice as my store brand. The last variable is the toughest, because it varies considerably from baby to baby. To (over)simplify the problem, I will use National Geographic‘s number (3796) of lifetime diapers along with the average unit cost for sizes 1-5.

Pampers cost an average of 29.2¢ per diaper

Multiply that by how many diapers a baby will use until they are potty trained (3796) and you end up with a total diaper cost of $1108

How about the store brand? That comes out to 16.8¢ a diaper and $637 overall.

Wow! That doesn’t sound so bad does it? Seriously, according to that, you can diaper your baby in name brand for only $1108. Something doesn’t smell right though, because that number is about half of what I have seen elsewhere on the internet. Let’s see, if your toddler potty trains at 25 months then that is the equivalent of 750 days. 3796 diapers divided by 750 days is equal to 5 diapers a day. YIKES! I don’t think any responsible parent changes their baby’s diaper once every 5 hours. How about once every 3 hours, then how many diapers would you go through until you made it to potty training?

6,000 diaper changes.

Pampers: Approximately $1752

Store Brand: Approximately $1008

Part 1 Conclusion

Parents who choose disposable diapers can expect to pay at least one thousand dollars in diapers. In my opinion, the store brand diapers are terrible and are about as much good as a paper sack. I’m positive some other parents agree with me, otherwise there wouldn’t be name brand diapers. In my analysis, I was very optimistic about the age of potty training. While I have no doubt that some children potty train at the age of 2 years and 1 month, I am very skeptical that many parents achieve that nirvana. I would guess that the true cost of disposable diapers for the average child is closer to $2000.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series where Shae talks about the resurgence of Cloth Diapers in the 21st Century!

Our Other $5 Find

June 12, 2014 by Andrew Leave a Comment

I wrote previously about how we walked around our neighborhood last weekend looking at garage sales. This was the result of the other $5 that we spent.

It’s hard to get a photo of him because he is always moving!

Here he is mesmerized by the aquarium. Just look at all that future baby proofing we’re going to have to do. 🙁

Like the Bumbo chair we picked up second hand, this entertainment doodad normally retails from $35-40. Frugal Boy doesn’t know or care that it is used though!

Garage Sales

June 8, 2014 by Andrew 1 Comment

Frugal Boy is growing like a weed and now does things like drool incessantly. Sometimes you’ll be holding him and feel a very wet, slimy dollop of drool land on your hand, arm, knee, or foot. Kind of like this:

Our neighborhood garage sale event was this weekend so we had to go out and try and score some finds. It was also interesting to see some parts of the neighborhood that are normally obscured from view like this homemade koi pond.

I guess that’s one way to use a claw foot tub.

After walking up and down and all around we did end up spending $10. $5 of that was for a bumbo chair. They retail for around $40 and used on Craigslist they list for about $20. This was one of the original models before the recall, but we were able to go home and get the safety kit sent to us for free by going to the recall website.

You’d better watch that mouth kiddo. A fly is going to land in there.