When I was pregnant, and stopped working about two weeks before the birth, I ended up watching too much television. Bargain Hunt (BBC) became one of my favorite shows, featuring an Austin Powers-type dentally impaired host named Tim. Tim gave 300 British pounds to two teams, they would canvas an antiques sale or a fair for, let's be honest, crap that other people purposely threw away. The three items would be offered for sale at a public auction, and whichever team lost less money, won the day.
I am too busy these days to catch most programs, but in fact I experience the Bargain Hunt challenge on a regular basis. Every week I receive coupons or circulars advertising a "sale" on diapers; the cheapest package of diapers I ever bought cost me 25 NIS (with special coupon), and to this day I have never paid full price, a whopping 64 NIS.
This week, the care taker informed me that she had run out of diapers, and so I went to my favorite supermarket, which offered two packages of Huggies for 95 NIS on special sale, or one package of Pampers for 49 NIS, or the second rate but not terrible diapers (Titulim) for 45 NIS. I was not spending a giant amount at the store, so the Huggies option fell through. I bought the Pampers for 49 NIS, because the difference in price between that and the Titulim was not enough to justify buying a lesser quality.
Raphaela's output has changed dramatically since she started eating solids, and I did not want to risk a major explosion of content.
Then the weekend paper featured a coupon for Pampers, 40 NIS/package. I have two full bags now, one for me and one for day care, but will probably buy another at this new price, hoping that her diaper size doesn't change any time soon.
Hell of a way to "save" money.
3 comments:
Don't know how practical it'd be for you, esp. given the amount of laundry they generate, but I found that the promise of saving money with cloth diapers was good. After some early experimentation I settled on Fuzzi Bunz -- meant tossing a load of diapers in the laundry every day to every other day. They dry almost instantly, soft & comfortable, no diaper pins, etc. Only downside was the bulkiness, which my kid didn't mind. They worked fine till around age 2, at which point they didn't contain output so well. I also kept a few disposables on hand in case of diarrhea.
The initial outlay is pretty steep -- the diapers themselves used to go for around US$10-12 each several years ago, plus another $3-4 for the inserts, but (though it sounds weird) you can resell them at the end, and once you've bought them you're more or less done with paying for diapers.
How about buying the next size up and hanging on to them so the savings come a little later?
Where do you get these coupons?? I feel like I'm always spending 60+ shekels on diapers. I know I shop at the wrong grocery stores (mr. zol), but there, even the titulim are more than 50nis/package.
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