A simple shower cut off valve can save you money and save water… and help save the planet, too! Turn the valve when you are shaving or letting the conditioner sink in… the water slows to a trickle but no drastic temperature change when you turn it back…

Lorelei’s last blog post..Laundry Soap for Pennies a Gallon

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Stephen connolly’s last blog post..No Free Lunch

I think a key is to set realistic expectations on what you can buy and what you can afford. Baby’s don’t know the difference between second-hand versus designer products. What they do notice is if they’re warm, dry, have milk to drink, and have parents who love them.

PS. I added a few *’s to the quote in order to keep DadTrek’s family rating. I hope that’s okay.

“A lot of my old friends tell me they’re still not ready to have kids, saying they’re not yet in “the right financial position to bring a child into the world” or some bulls*** like that. But those same friends party like rock stars every chance they get. Children, the conventional wisdom goes, are expensive. Lies. You know what’s expensive? Drinks at hotel bars. You could support a family of six from the Ozarks for a whole year with what it costs to spend one night out in Manhattan. I’ve never saved as much money as I did after my kid was born. Once I became a parent and I no longer had to exchange fivers for pints all night and then pay Pakistanis to drive my drunk a** home, my beer budget shrank to a tenth of what it had been before, despite the fact that I was now drinking nearly ten times as much. What’s supposed to be so expensive? Food? All they eat is nipple nectar for like six months. Diapers? How many diapers do you think you can buy for the cost of one dinner at a trendy, overpriced restaurant? Ten boxes of the good kind, bro: even the ones with the stretchy tabs. College? That’s what scholarships or state schools are for. Is it the clothes that are supposed to be so expensive? For the first year of our daughter’s life we were awash in a sea of footie pajamas, tiny tennis dresses, and itty-bitty blue jeans. Conventional wisdom doesn’t take into consideration how much s*** people give you when you have a kid. They fall all over themselves to give you totally adorable crap. And when she grew out of that s***, I figured out why God invented Goodwill. I wish my financial planner had told me all this stuff. I would have had a kid years ago and retired a millionaire.”

Stephen connolly’s last blog post..No Free Lunch

@Vincent – I can’t stress enough how much money we’ve saved from hand-me-downs and second-hand items. The great part is that while I’m no fashion expert (the only thing I can do, most of the time, is match colors), it’s fun when people comment on how cute her clothes are. I guess the people giving us the clothes have good taste!

Thanks for the comments.

Vincent @ The Dad Jam’s last blog post..Money: How to Reduce the Cost of Kids: Part 2