After researching several articles and websites online, I came across a new trend that is going on. Several small, non-profits have been sprining up with one goal - providing diapers to needy families. Even Huggies has got into the act with their recent Huggies - Every Little Bottom program. The non-profits are most often referred to as diaper banks, and one of the first was http://www.thediaperbank.org/.
Evidently, 1 in 3 mothers will have problems buying diapers for their children, and these chartities are working hard to address this issue. Keep in mind, that it is not the mother these charities are focusing on, but the children - the victims that are sometimes forced to wear re-used diapers. Also, it is worth mentioning that most states who provide assistance for formula for infants will not provide money for diapers. This means that the limited and stretched budgets of many households force these children to do without.
There are many ways to get involved, you can start a local diaper bank (and a great resource to start is http://www.thediaperbank.org/), you can donate diapers to Huggies or one of these diaper banks, or simply donate money to one of these organizations - Huggies has a list of many organizations that will help get these babies diapers.
Regardless of how you may feel about the mother, the circumstance, or otherwise, the issue here is that babies are going without. I think this is a travesty, and that is why I am supporting these charities.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Breast Feeding in Public
As a soon-to-be father of triplets, and a full-time student, saving money is an absolute necessity, and that is why we are planning, hoping and praying to be able to breast feed our babies. Although some recent protections, ad campaigns and general sentiment have fostered a renewed interest, understanding and general acceptance of breast feeding - even in public, a recent article in Ohio caught my eye. http://www.morningjournal.com/articles/2010/07/29/news/doc4c517c8de687b089655038.txt
This article details how a mother, who was "discretely" breast feeding her baby in a store, was forced and escorted by store personnel out of the public area and into a dressing room. The store subsequently issued an appology for their behavior.
Even with the recent "advances" of the image of breastfeeding, people frowning and harassing mothers trying to feed their children. The problem with this, is that this doesn't hurt the mother, this hurts the child. The child, who is starving and hungry needs to be fed, and the mother, who is simply trying to take care of her baby is the one injured by this type of behavior. Not only is breast feeding a way for an overly-cost-burdened mother to save money, it is proven to be much better for a baby's health. Harassing a mother who is simply trying to do the best thing for her child and putting her child's needs over her own is obnoxious.
This article details how a mother, who was "discretely" breast feeding her baby in a store, was forced and escorted by store personnel out of the public area and into a dressing room. The store subsequently issued an appology for their behavior.
Even with the recent "advances" of the image of breastfeeding, people frowning and harassing mothers trying to feed their children. The problem with this, is that this doesn't hurt the mother, this hurts the child. The child, who is starving and hungry needs to be fed, and the mother, who is simply trying to take care of her baby is the one injured by this type of behavior. Not only is breast feeding a way for an overly-cost-burdened mother to save money, it is proven to be much better for a baby's health. Harassing a mother who is simply trying to do the best thing for her child and putting her child's needs over her own is obnoxious.
Disposable Diapers de-mystified
In March of 2010, I found out that I would be the father of triplets. A full-time-student, and dependent on my wife for our family's income, I began to panic. I kept thinking, how will I afford three babies, when I was expecting one. Then I thought about, how will I afford formula, diapers, wipes and all of the other things that babies burn through. Babies are expensive, something I learned quickly. I started looking at everything, trying to figure out how I would stay in school, by saving money on the consumables.
The first thing I looked at was hiring a diaper service and using cloth diapers. Something everyone told me to do to save money. Maybe on a singleton, but buying disposable diapers in bulk for three babies proved quickly to be a substantial savings over a diaper service or cloth diapers. Although slightly uncomfortable with the ecological impact of using disposable diapers, I soon learned that cloth diapering caused just as much ecological damage to the environment as disposables (through excess use of water, use of detergents and other pollutants), cloth diapering is regarded as almost as damaging as disposables.
After realizing no savings (and actually quite a bit more money would be spent on a diaper service), we decided to go the route of disposables. I had to make this work, so I started researching and trying to find out what the keys were to getting the best deal on diapers. The first thing was that I needed to figure out the basic cost per diaper. With three babies, I will use 30, that is 3-0 diapers per day, and I soon figured out that the packs of 10 diapers at the gas station cost roughly $1.00 per diaper. Therefore, buying diapers at the gas station would cost me $30.00 per day, or more disturbingly $12,000 per year. Then I looked at the grocery store, and when shopping on sale, the price dropped to $0.15 to $0.45 per diaper. Still, this is as $1,642.50 to $4,927.50 per year price range. If I could only buy diapers at $0.15 per diaper, I would be golden.
The problem is, that I can and I cannot. I found out that as diapers increase in size, the quantity decreases, and therefore, the price will get higher as my children age, but... and an important but... my children will use less diapers. So, therefore, it seems that as my kids age, the price of their diapers should remain constant.
This was slightly comforting, but the fact remained the same, how would I figure out if I was getting a good deal or not. Then I figured out these three facts:
1.Buying diapers online saves money, hands down (for the most part)
2.Clipping coupons and buying a small pack (or several packs) can beat an online deal easily
3.If you are unable to buy online and do not have any coupons ready, make sure you have a calculator with you and prepare to go to several stores to find that elusive pack of diapers (regardless of the size) at the sweet $0.20 per diaper pricing.
So, the key is figuring out the price per diaper. What you do, is you divide the price by the number of diapers in the package. This should give you the all-important PPD (or price per diaper). Then you know if you have a good deal. After logging thousands of diaper sizes, products, categories, sizes and prices, I learned a few things of interest. The first is, that you never know if the online vendor is cheaper than the gas station around the corner. If the gas station around the cornier is cheaper, buy up all of their stock. The second thing is that buying the biggest quantity available is usually the last thing you want to do (unless you are at a wholesale club like BJ's). Most of the time, the most expensive, super, jumbo, mega cases are more expensive, at least per diaper, than the smaller, medium sized package. So, if you want the best deal, you need to do the math, but it is a small price to pay for savings - at least if you have triplets on the way.
The first thing I looked at was hiring a diaper service and using cloth diapers. Something everyone told me to do to save money. Maybe on a singleton, but buying disposable diapers in bulk for three babies proved quickly to be a substantial savings over a diaper service or cloth diapers. Although slightly uncomfortable with the ecological impact of using disposable diapers, I soon learned that cloth diapering caused just as much ecological damage to the environment as disposables (through excess use of water, use of detergents and other pollutants), cloth diapering is regarded as almost as damaging as disposables.
After realizing no savings (and actually quite a bit more money would be spent on a diaper service), we decided to go the route of disposables. I had to make this work, so I started researching and trying to find out what the keys were to getting the best deal on diapers. The first thing was that I needed to figure out the basic cost per diaper. With three babies, I will use 30, that is 3-0 diapers per day, and I soon figured out that the packs of 10 diapers at the gas station cost roughly $1.00 per diaper. Therefore, buying diapers at the gas station would cost me $30.00 per day, or more disturbingly $12,000 per year. Then I looked at the grocery store, and when shopping on sale, the price dropped to $0.15 to $0.45 per diaper. Still, this is as $1,642.50 to $4,927.50 per year price range. If I could only buy diapers at $0.15 per diaper, I would be golden.
The problem is, that I can and I cannot. I found out that as diapers increase in size, the quantity decreases, and therefore, the price will get higher as my children age, but... and an important but... my children will use less diapers. So, therefore, it seems that as my kids age, the price of their diapers should remain constant.
This was slightly comforting, but the fact remained the same, how would I figure out if I was getting a good deal or not. Then I figured out these three facts:
1.Buying diapers online saves money, hands down (for the most part)
2.Clipping coupons and buying a small pack (or several packs) can beat an online deal easily
3.If you are unable to buy online and do not have any coupons ready, make sure you have a calculator with you and prepare to go to several stores to find that elusive pack of diapers (regardless of the size) at the sweet $0.20 per diaper pricing.
So, the key is figuring out the price per diaper. What you do, is you divide the price by the number of diapers in the package. This should give you the all-important PPD (or price per diaper). Then you know if you have a good deal. After logging thousands of diaper sizes, products, categories, sizes and prices, I learned a few things of interest. The first is, that you never know if the online vendor is cheaper than the gas station around the corner. If the gas station around the cornier is cheaper, buy up all of their stock. The second thing is that buying the biggest quantity available is usually the last thing you want to do (unless you are at a wholesale club like BJ's). Most of the time, the most expensive, super, jumbo, mega cases are more expensive, at least per diaper, than the smaller, medium sized package. So, if you want the best deal, you need to do the math, but it is a small price to pay for savings - at least if you have triplets on the way.
Diaper pricing pitfalls
Diapers are confusing. They come in almost uncountable varieties, brands, styles and more. Most brands have at least two or three different types of disposable diapers - for example, Pampers has Cruisers, Baby Dry, Swaddlers and Sensitive. After you weed through the type, you buy a package of diapers, including; convenience packs, economy packs, jumbo packs, bulk packs, jumbo box, value box, economy box. What is worse is that many places who sell diapers will actually sell up to 10 to 15 different package styles of the same style of diaper. An example of this is Diapers.com sells 11 different packages (not sizes, packages) of Pampers, Size 3 diapers, of which there are 6 different options of purchasing Pampers Cruisers. Now the purpose of an online store is to give the customer variety, but grocery stores are not much better. A recent trip to Target gave the author the option of purchasing 16 different types of Pampers, of which there were six different package quantities of Pampers Cruisers.
So, how do you make sense out of all this? Well, generally, it is true that the largest package is the best deal. Back to Diapers.com and their Cruisers, the largest package ranges in price per diaper of $0.2687 for size three to $0.4299 for size 6. However, buying just a slightly smaller quantity only increases your price per diaper by $0.0170 (size 3) to $0.0048 (size 6). In essence, there is almost no difference in prices, except that, based on average diapers used in a specific stage, the price savings from size 3 to size 6 will save you $145 over the time your child is in diapers.
Why would you buy a pack for $3 less when you can get more? The answer is simple, and that is in the risk of having unused diapers. For example, assuming again specific averages of time spent in a specific size, buying the package that has more diapers will create 308 unused diapers, while the smaller package will only leave you with 112 unused diapers. Meaning, if you buy the bigger package, you will spend $100.37 on diapers that would not go to use, versus only $39.30. However, this means that you are buying two extra packages of the largest size, and one full extra package of the smaller size. So, is the answer to buy smaller packages? Smaller packages do not offer better pricing, although, some pricing is decent, especially if you are not able to spend $45 a pop for the biggest packages. In fact, when looking at packages priced at $34.99, the price per diaper was only $0.3016 to $0.4860 for size 3 and size 6 respectively. This means there is only a per diaper price difference of $0.06 to $0.08. This does add up though, and from the cheapest price to this one means that overall, you would spend an extra $286 on diapers. However, when looking at two other packages, one sells for $16.99 and another for $24.99, this skews the pricing. Both offer near identical pricing, except for a key difference, the package sold for $16.99 in sizes 4,5,6 is actually cheaper, by roughly $0.02 to $0.03 per diaper. The $16.99 packages offer a better deal than the more expensive package, except for size 3, which is only $0.005 per diaper higher. However, buying either of these two packages routinely will still cost $487 more than buying the cheapest diapers. Finally, the worst offender is the "convenience" package. Even on diapers.com, where the site is supposed to offer some of the best prices on diapers - which it does for the most part - will ultimately break your budget. At $11.29 per package, this only saves you roughly $5.00 per package over the $16.99 pack, but, and this is a huge but, the price per diaper increases dramatically $.10 to $.14 per diaper more than the cheapest package. This creates an overall extra cost of $786 (based on average diaper use).
The final way to compare diapers is to look at the package that is the best deal and then figure out what the savings are versus the cheaper package. For example, the best deal (in size 3) is $42.99 for 160 diapers. Compare this to the packages at $24.49, $34.99 and $11.29 that have 76, 116 and 31 diapers respectively. This means, that when you buy any of the following, you are actually spending $9.29, $5.28 and $15.30 less buying the biggest package over the convenience packages.
Keep in mind that the previous discussion only concerns diapers from one size, at one store, and that store is a discount store that prides itself on offering the best prices. When buying diapers at a local store, the pricing changes dramatically.
We have catalogued over 700 different local and online diaper prices. This database shows that there are substantial price differences in diapers. The average lowest cost per diaper is $0.22, and the highest average cost is $.51. Therefore, this means you would spend over $2,025.88 extra on diapers. If you have twins, triplets or quads, you might as well multiply this by that number, which is a decent used car, or a down payment on a new house. To demonstrate the difference in product prices, a comparison of the price difference by brand, type, size and the lowest and highest prices. The price differences range from a mere $0.04 per diaper to $0.37 per diaper. This means that again, based on that 7,000 figure, there is a potential of paying nearly $2,570 more for diapers. Even at $0.04 per diaper though, based on 7,000 diapers, you are spending $280 more on diapers. Of course, the average price difference in the Intelligent Mommy database was $0.15 per diaper, or $1,057.75. The final thing to note is that the Intelligent Mommy pricing database does not list sale prices, but only the regular prices. In addition, the Intelligent Mommy database does not record "convenience" packages, or other items that are clearly a bad deal.
Lastly, buying diapers on sale or by using coupons can further decrease the cost per diaper by $0.05 to sometimes $0.10 or more. This adds up quickly, and can decrease your costs dramatically. Just saving $0.05 per diaper average, on the lowest prices (on average from the Intelligent Mommy database), could mean paying only $910 for your baby's diapers. This is a stark contrast to the average highest price, which would mean you would pay (on average) $0.39 per diaper or $2,701.91.
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