How I've saved money post-baby

Babies are expensive. I know, right? Total shocker, that. I figured I would do another thrifty post as a follow-up from Lauren's post a couple of weeks back. When I was pregnant, I wrote a few posts about how to survive pregnancy and money was often at the forefront of my mind. I thought I would share some tips as to how we've done some canny money-saving since D has arrived.

Image: allparenting.com

Gifts- there's no denying it, you get a lot of stuff after you have a baby. We were very lucky in that family and friends were very generous and often asked what we would like. Generally, we asked for either clothes we were short of, size-wise, or vouchers for Boots and Mothercare. A while back, I posted this handy guide  to buying gifts for babies. We were also given a crib, which in the spirit of paying-it-forward, I am lending to Lauren once her sproglet arrives.

Offers- Boots are brilliant; their parenting club offers vouchers and ten points for every pound you spend on baby stuff (excluding formula). Our changing bag is also part of the the parenting club- it's not great (I lust after Yippy Dada bags), but it does the job. I've built up so many points and saved a fair whack of money with just this one scheme. Check out supermarkets as well; these schemes really come into their own once the baby arrives!

Ebay- I have bought some more expensive items from eBay- sleeping sacks (which are about £20 new; bought for £2-£5) and an almost new John Lewis snowsuit, which would have been about £25 for... 99p. You can get some proper bargains- just make sure you wash them in non-bio detergent before giving them to baby.

Charity and second hand shops- Where I live there is a plethora of both of these types of shop. I don't see the point in spending a fortune on stuff that D will grow out of quickly. I've found some real bargains in secondhand shops (there are specialist baby ones too- I once bought a dungarees/cardi combo that was a very upmarket French brand, which would have cost me double what I paid for it.) I've been given tips about stuff like Lego as well (apparently, you chuck it in some diluted bleach and rinse it off before giving it to kids.)

Any tips to add? Leave them in the comments or let me know on Twitter: @wuthering_alice

Scrimping and Saving

When we discovered a sprog was imminent  we were over-joyed. Then shortly after that we entered panic mode for me it was how the hell am I going to give birth to an actual baby, and for Sam it was how the hell are we going to manage financially? which, once aired, became joint top concern for me.

Obviously I'm not going to go into our personal finances in detail, but we both have full time jobs, and together earn just over the benchmark that means you're entitled to pretty much zilch from the government. I get a very minimally enhanced maternity over the national allowance from my company. The below is taken from the government website

Statutory Maternity Pay is paid for up to 39 weeks, usually as follows:

• the first 6 weeks - 90% of your average weekly earnings (AWE) before tax
• the next 33 weeks - £135.45 or 90% of your AWE (whichever is lower)

You can’t get less than the statutory amount but you can get more if your company has a maternity scheme.

So basically my income will be dramatically less than it normally is, and if I want to stay off work longer than 39 weeks then I get zilch per week. Hurrah.

So the first thing we decided to do was start saving money immediately! Now this wasn't that hard to get used to, as we were about to get married (which we funded ourselves) and had been on a strict spending ban since setting a date. On reflection I definitely wouldn't have spent as much as we did had we known a baby was going to arrive 6 months after strolling up the aisle, even though we didn't spend a fortune on our wedding! 

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Things we decided to do were: 

• not buy anything brand new, apart from a cot mattress and a car seat. EVERYTHING else (& I do mean everything) can be bought second hand, lent by a lovely friend, or fetched from the depths of a parents attic. 
• I will give up getting acrylic nails, saving £260 a year
• Sam will quit smoking (again, and this is also for health of the kid, although he doesn't smoke in the house) saving £1000 a year
• We will reduce our telly package from XL to the lowest one. We very rarely watch any of the on demand stuff, and could easily get by with the lower package, as we don't actually watch TV that much anyway, as we tend to watch series of things on our computers! Saving circa £180 a year
• We started a joint bank account (scary!) with Santander and transferred all our household direct debits to this, as you get 1, 2 or 3% cash-back on various bills, from Internet council tax/mobile phones. I've not actually worked out how much we will get extra from this, but it is a free account so its all a plus, probably circa £200 a year for free!
• We checked to see if our electricity/gas/water was the cheapest we could get it, by using the meerkat website, and it turned out it WAS the cheapest already, but worth checking! Also make sure you submit meter readings every month so you get billed for actuals and not estimates!
• We will move. Our Brighton house is not tenable with just Sams salary and my maternity (at the moment we live with a lovely house-mate but she won't stick around with a screaming baby in the house and I don't blame her!) We've not set a date yet but we will probably move out of Brighton (needs must, alas!)
• Instead of going on an 'abroad' holiday pre baby we're going to go on a holiday with friends in Cornwall, which will save us money. (Saving probably around £600)
• I had already stopped buying excessive make-up clothes/handbags/toiletries and shoes in the run up to the wedding and this has continued, and instead I am using every last drop of every shampoo/moisturiser/foundation bottle and only buying new things when they are on sale/offer, or with foreign labels from Poundland (I love poundland) (Saving around £100 a month if I'm honest!)

So that's about it for now, I'll obviously let you know how we get on, and of any new ideas that might save a few pennies here and there! And if anyone else has any tips please do share them in the comments!