Clark's Big Book of Bargains (6 page)

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CHAPTER 2
FAMILY + CHILDREN

As a father of two children, I can tell you that, while there are challenges to raising children, it’s mostly a joy. The greatest challenge is being able to afford them.

Practicality and creativity are key if you’re going to have an affordable lifestyle with multiple mouths to feed, bodies to clothe, and minds to educate.

I was very impressed with a couple I met in Raleigh, North Carolina, who have five children, all under the age of fifteen. They have no credit-card debt. Their only debts are a car loan and a mortgage, which is a fifteen-year loan. In addition to being in such a strong financial position, they are happy. “How do you do it?” I asked them. Their answer was they are very practical in raising their children. For example, instead of buying expensive new clothes for each child, they do a lot of hand-me-downs.

In this chapter, I’ll show you how to save money when you get ready for your first child, how to raise children with Clark Smart money values, and how to save on braces, private school, and music and dance lessons. I’ll also show you how to save when you buy things for those other members of your family, your pets.

* BUYING FOR YOUR FIRST CHILD *

When a couple finds out they’re going to have a child for the first time, there’s so much excitement—and so much anxiety.

People often buy too many things in advance—and buy the wrong things—as they try to get ready for their child’s first day in their home. Until your child is home, you really don’t know what things are going to be useful and what things are not. I have two daughters, and when I think back to what people gave us, I’m surprised at how many of those things we didn’t use at all. We even requested some of those items by listing them on a baby registry.

The most practical thing for you to give or receive at a baby shower is gender-neutral clothing, in sizes up to 3T. People give tons of newborn outfits, including some very fancy things that are hard to put on or take off a baby. Fancy clothes end up staying in the closet. What you need are comfortable outfits that are easy to get a child into and out of, particularly from ages six months to twenty-four months, when the child’s size changes rapidly.

Used clothing also is a great idea, because of how fast your child will outgrow everything. Buying new clothes all the time will just eat up your money. If you don’t have access to hand-me-downs from friends and family, there are plenty of stores that specialize in selling used children’s clothing. Most used baby clothes are in very good condition because they’ve been used for only a month or so. But check used clothing carefully before you buy. Often these stores have brand-new items as well. If used clothing doesn’t appeal to you, try a discounter such as Wal-Mart or Target.

Because of the instability in retailing, a lot of the best deals on clothing are in stores that buy other people’s mistakes. Perhaps a department store buyer bought more of an item than the store could handle, or a manufacturer made more of an item than it could sell. Once the season’s over, they have to get rid of those goods, so they sell them to stores such as Marshalls, T.J. Maxx, and the ultra-low-cost store Value City, which at this point is in only fifteen states (check www.valuecity.com for locations). Value City’s entire business model is based on buying goods from bankrupt manufacturers and retailers and from manufacturers and retailers who simply messed up and bought or made too much of a particular item. They offer reasonable savings during a clothing season, but phenomenal savings after the season. Value City has been a fantastic source for low-priced clothing for my youngest daughter.

Many cities also have no-name liquidators that offer merchandise at huge discounts.

You can always save money on clothes by buying at the right time of the season, no matter where you shop. Don’t buy summer clothes in the spring as retailers want you to do; wait until summer actually starts. (See the Clothing section, in the “Necessities” chapter, for more details.)

The second mistake people often make as they get ready for their first child is they put “baby” furniture in the nursery. It looks so cute, but in just a few years your child isn’t going to like being around baby furniture. On the other hand, a toddler is not going to remember what furniture they had as a newborn. So it’s more practical to get the things you’re going to need—a bassinet, a crib, and a changing table or a changing attachment—and buy traditional furniture. It can be more youth-oriented—but don’t buy furniture that works only in a nursery, because it’s not going to be around long. You can tell that by how poorly a lot of it is made!

As much as I love secondhand stuff, I want you to be careful with secondhand car seats, cribs, and bassinets, because safety standards change so much through the years. I have two daughters, one born in 1989 and one born in 1999, and it seemed like nothing was the same when my second daughter, Stephanie, was born. Cribs have tighter safety standards. Car seats are completely different. Unless you’re doing hand-me-downs for a child born a couple of years earlier, I suggest you buy new.

As for the crib, don’t go overboard. I have a friend who spent $800 on his daughter’s crib, and when I heard that, I was in shock. Stephanie’s crib cost $109, and you really have to work to spend that much. Cribs that meet all safety standards start at around $69. You can get very attractive-looking cribs from $109 to $129. The unnecessary $700 that he spent on a crib could buy a lot of food and diapers.

Christa DiBiase, executive producer of my radio show, bought a crib for her new baby online from Kmart. It looks just like an $800 crib from Pottery Barn, and a friend mistakenly thought she had bought it there. But Christa’s cost $180. Too rich for me, but quite a deal nonetheless.

Go to www.safekids.org, the Web site of the National Safe Kids Campaign, for some great safety tips. For example, it says that cribs are required to have no more than 2⅜ inches of space between the slats or spindles, and that a safe crib will have a mattress that fits snugly, covered by a well-fitting crib sheet.

Christa decorated her entire nursery for about $600, and got the look of fancy baby stores and magazines for thousands of dollars less. She went to the flea market and found a great long buffet painted in distressed white. This is “the look” for baby furniture these days, Christa says, but it can be extremely expensive. The cool thing about her “dresser” is that it has two cabinets and three drawers (great for storing baby supplies and clothing). It’s much longer than a normal dresser, and easily accommodates a changing pad and supplies on top. It cost her $200, and she has received many compliments on it. If she’d bought it at a retail store, it easily would have cost her $1,500, especially with the distressed look. She can repaint it and use it in a formal dining room once her child outgrows it.

Christa also found a beautiful lamp and a chandelier for her baby’s room at the flea market. The chandelier is in an antique white color, and she bought five different-colored shades she found in an outlet store. It looks like one she saw in a baby store for $800, and she paid a total of $100. Her other flea market finds: great shelves, a cute bookcase made to look like a picket fence, and some prints for the baby’s room.

Christa went to a discount store that specializes in home decor and crafts and bought some cute accessories similar to those she saw in a fancy baby store display. She bought a decorative painted birdcage to hold baby supplies in. Cost in baby store: $90. Cost at the home decor discounter: $10. She also bought a white bunny planter to hold Q-tips and a small white watering can to hold cotton balls. Each was $5. The similar accessories in the baby store were $35 each. She also found a great basket to hold baby toys. It cost $10.

For the window treatment, Christa wanted what is called a cornice. She got quotes from two different fabric store vendors and it was going to cost her $200 to have it made by them. Instead, she found a kit and made one herself (no sewing involved—she has no idea how to do that stuff) for $30. These things aren’t as hard as they seem. With the leftover fabric, her talented sister-in-law made her a round tablecloth for the $5 side table she found on sale at Kmart.

Christa’s nursery looks like a million bucks. She did it by shopping around at some of the expensive baby stores, but leaving her purse at home. You can find some great ideas in their displays and re-create them on your budget. The catalogs also provide an easy way to carry your ideas with you.

Take a similar approach when buying furniture for older children. Kids grow up so fast these days, and their tastes change very quickly. So buying your child an expensive bed that looks like a race car may seem like a great idea when he’s four, but he isn’t going to want anything to do with it by the time he’s eight. When my oldest daughter Rebecca was little, we put these self-sticking cartoon characters on the wall, and she loved them. Then one day, when she was just eight or nine, she said she didn’t want them anymore, and we took them down. Why spend a lot of money on furniture that has such a short life cycle? Buy that kind of item at a garage sale.

Baby Formula

Mother’s milk is the best nutrient for infants. But a lot of mothers use formula, either exclusively or as a supplement. If you do need formula, you might be surprised to know that generic, or store formula, is exactly the same nutritionally as name-brand formula. In fact, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration sets out the requirements for baby formula, and you can compare them can to can. According to the FDA’s Web site (www.fda.gov), “the safety of commercially prepared formula is ensured by the agency’s nutrient requirements and by strict quality-control procedures that require manufacturers to analyze each batch of formula for required nutrients, to test samples for stability during the shelf life of the product, to code containers to identify the batch, and to make all records available to FDA investigators.”

One of the big brand names got in trouble for going to doctors’ offices and telling them that their formula was better. They were trying to get the doctors to tell patients not to use generic formula. But their claim of superiority wasn’t true, and they had to stop using that as a sales pitch.

I spoke with a caller, Annette, who heard me touting generic baby formula on my show. She called me to say that she just wouldn’t risk her child’s health to save a few bucks. I explained to her that the FDA regulates infant formula, and that if she would just compare the labels on the two canisters of formula, she would see that they are the same. Still unconvinced, Annette asked her pediatrician during her child’s checkup appointment. When he told her that the generic formula was equivalent and perfectly fine, she decided to try it. Two weeks later, she called me back to rave about how wonderful the generic formula was, and how much money she was saving. Her child didn’t flinch when she switched the formula, and she was able to pocket some money for her little one’s future.

Generic formula is usually half the cost of brand-name formula, a bigger discount than other generic products because the stores have to overcome the hesitancy people have about giving generic formula to their child. Just about everybody sells generic formula, from supermarkets to discount stores. It’s widely available and a big savings in your budget. Unfortunately, there isn’t the same competition on food for older children.

Disposable Diapers

The second big budget-buster for new parents is diapers. People laugh at me because both of my daughters were generic-diaper babies, but again, the savings are gigantic. There’s product stratification even in the generic area. So you’ll find ultra-discount generics as well as generics whose features and comfort are designed to mimic brand-name disposable diapers. Wal-Mart, for example, has a very inexpensive line of diapers for people who want the rock-bottom low price. We’ve bought the other, more expensive Wal-Mart brand, which still costs much less than the name brand. We’ve been thoroughly satisfied.

Even if you buy brand-name diapers, you’ll probably try a few different kinds to see which works best for you. So why not try a few generics first? If one variety leaks or irritates your baby’s skin, don’t buy it again. But if you find a brand that works, you’ll save a phenomenal amount of money as you buy diapers, week after week, year after year. Warehouse clubs and supermarkets sell their own brands, as do some drugstores and discount stores.

If you feel guilty about getting generic diapers or formula for your child, put the savings into a college fund and tell your child later that generic diapers put her through college.

• Tips on Buying for Your First Child •

• Don’t buy too many things in advance. Wait until your child is home to see what’s going to be useful.
  

• Buy comfortable outfits that are easy to get a child into and out of, particularly from ages six months to twenty-four months.
  

• Used clothing is a great idea, because of how fast your child will outgrow everything and the practically nonexistent wear and tear.
  

• Look for deals on children’s clothing in stores that buy other people’s mistakes, such as Marshalls, T.J. Maxx, and Value City, which is in only fifteen states.
  

• Don’t buy “baby” furniture. It won’t last long, and in just a few years, your child won’t like it.
  

• Get ideas from baby stores and catalogs, but re-create their ideas for far less money.
  

• Avoid used car seats, cribs, and bassinets. Safety standards change too quickly.
  

• If you use baby formula, try generic. It’s about half the price of brand-name formula and is required by federal law to be nutritionally equal.
  

• Buying generic diapers is another excellent way to save money.