Saturday, November 05, 2011

Diaper prices, going up?

When Rena was born, I came up with a three-point financial plan: beg, borrow and steal.

My revulsion for larceny led me to interpret point #3 as "get everything you absolutely must buy for a steal."

Especially diapers. Really. The baby wears it for 5 minutes (if we're not lucky) or 10 hours (if we are) and then we just toss it in the trash. I'm not paying full price!

At first, a great Groupon made me think, diapers.com is the place to be. Then that great Groupon disqualified us from any discount ever again, and we said sayonara. For a while, we were using the Amazon Mom discounts on Amazon to score super-cheap diapers, discounted 30% and paid for with gift cards I got for free with Swagbucks and credit card points.

Have I mentioned I'm nuts?

All the while, my obsession with finding the best coupon codes was fueled by my favorite frugal mommy bloggers, Kosher on a Budget and Chief Family Officer. Unfortunately, a lot of the good couponing principles (like "stock up when there is a good price" and "wait for sales") don't work when there is only 1 diaper between the baby being adorable and the baby peeing on the bed on Shabbat morning.

I'm a bit annoyed because Amazon Mom is now only offering discounts of 20% on new subscriptions, meaning that I need to find a new "cheapest place to get wipes". I had lately been cheating on Amazon with CVS for diapers, since I can get the same gift cards with credit card points, and the Extra Bucks and stacked coupons often make a lackluster sale really cheap. However, the wipes deals have not been as easy to find. I expect that Ari will mutiny if I announce that we'll resume wiping the baby's adorable derriere with paper towels, like the doctor made us do for the first 12 weeks of her life.

We all have our own points of view, the things we don't care about and the things we can't let go. The thrill I get from a good deal combined with my feeling that I should not pay good money for anything I use to wipe my baby's butt keeps me reading circulars and pining for specials. Until the day I'm the lunatic driving a tractor trailer away from a store with $1000 worth of goods I paid $12 for in an episode of Extreme Couponing (which I'm convinced cannot be real), I'll be reading my circulars, searching for the best price and running to two CVS stores at 10pm on a Saturday night to get the best deal before it expires. In my own bizarre way, I'll consider it worth it.

Seriously, have you seen what they are charging for diapers these days?

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