Priceline Name Your Own Price

Having two young children, my wife and I tend to cringe at the thought of driving more than a few hours at a time because we know there will be a lot of whining, screaming, and seat kicking. Since we are currently going to school about 16 hours away from both our families, though, we frequently have to make these kinds of trips. For us, the thing that has worked best has been to take about three days to make the trip, whenever our schedules allow. That way we only drive about five or six hours each day, and the rest of the time can be spent walking around with the kids or taking them swimming in the hotel pool. The obvious downside, though, is that we have to pay for two nights in hotels.

The best way I've found to save money on hotels is through Priceline's "Name Your Own Price" feature. There you are able to select what city you're looking at, your dates, and the quality hotel you're looking for (one star to five stars). I've been able to get us rooms in very nice three star hotels for $40 a night. There are a few important things you need to know when bidding, though.

First, you aren't allowed to bid on the same search twice within 24 hours if the only thing you change is the price you're bidding. For example, if you bid $30 for a three star hotel within a certain location and they don't take your bid, you can't bid $35 for the same location and star level again right away; you have to wait 24 hours. If, however, you decide you could settle for a two-and-a-half star hotel, or you're willing to stay in a different area a short distance away, then you can bid again right away.

Second, when you submit your bid, you have to fill in all of your credit card information, and if they accept your bid it is binding. Once you click the button to make your bid there is no turning back, and your card will get charged.

Finally, be aware that if you are used to staying at less expensive hotels, higher quality hotels might charge you for things that you expect to be free. For example, we recently needed to go to D.C., so we decided to drive up Friday, stay the night, then come back home Saturday after we finished what we were doing. I also planned on getting some homework done while we were there on Friday night. I thought we had a great deal, because we got a room at the three-and-a-half star Hyatt-Regency Bethesda with a $50 bid. After Priceline's taxes and fees we paid about $65, which was great for a room that normally goes for close to $200 a night. When we got there, though, we immediately found out that parking was $15 per night. Later, when I tried to do some homework, we found out that internet was $10 a day. Then, when we got up the next morning we found out that even the continental breakfast actually cost $10 per person. We skipped the breakfast and went to McDonalds, which was $15 for the four of us, but we did end up paying for parking and internet, so our final price was around $105. Still a lot better than paying full price at the Hyatt, but not so hot when you consider that there are some two stars that you could probably get for around $4o that include free parking, breakfast, and internet.

In the end, Priceline is a great tool to save money, but learn from my mistake and don't let the temptation for discounted luxury lure you into spending a lot more than you need to.

Save on Gas

We usually realize we’ve spent a bit on gas when we go for a long drive, but we tend to be less conscious of how all the little trips add up. For example, we were recently discussing the local YMCA. For a great price it has a gym and a pool, and they’ll even watch the kids in the day care while you exercise. However, the Y is 12 miles from our home. That means a round trip of 24 miles, which is roughly a gallon of gas for our cars. With the current price of gas, that means one trip to the gym is $3.50 in gas. If you go three times a week (okay, that’s optimistic for me but we’ll assume you’re better), that’s $10.50/week and nearly $50/month. When you add that to the cost of the gym membership, it doesn’t seem like nearly as good a deal. That doesn’t mean we will drop our membership, but knowing the true cost of the gym helps evaluate potential alternatives that might cost more in membership fees but less in mileage.

This is also another reason to follow Keegan’s advice about planning out trips to the grocery store. If you can go shopping just once a week (or even once every two weeks) and avoid all those little trips to pick up stuff you forgot, you’ll not only save shopping time and money, you’ll also save a lot in gas. It all adds up...

Cloth Diapers

To some, the idea of using cloth diapers may seem archaic and backwards. Or it may just seem like it would be too much work. I admit - I was definitely in that pool of thinking at first. Having a good friend who's been using them for 5 years and having used them for over a year myself, I can vouch that they really aren't that bad. Admittedly there are days when I'm annoyed with dunking the diaper in the toilet or having to re-adjust my laundering routine. Overall, however, I've grown to actually love using cloth diapers on my baby. And I don't seem to find myself more annoyed than any other parent I know of who uses disposables when it comes to diapering.

I chose to start using cloth diapers almost right away after my son was born. We put him in disposables for the first month and then plunged into cloth after that. I put in a lot of research before he was born to learn about cloth diapers and decide which type I wanted to purchase. There are many, many options of cloth diapers from prefolds (the standard square or rectangle piece of cloth that typically comes to mind) which must be used with a separate cover to what are called All-In-Ones (a prefold sewn into a polyurethane cover) that you just throw on the kiddo, Velcro or snap on, and go. I chose to go with the most economical choice (the prefolds). My first purchase of cloth diapers included 24 prefolds, 2 snappis (they hold the diaper together), and 6 covers. When my son was about four months old I made my second purchase of 24 larger prefolds and 6 larger covers and 2 more snappis. Along the way I also purchased a few extra absorbent liners to place in the cloth diaper for the night time as well as 4 All-In-One diapers. All-In-Ones are more expensive (at least twice the cost of prefolds). I found some used, however, on craigslist and gave them a good disinfecting wash when I brought them home. I just wanted to try a different type of diaper out and see if I preferred them over the prefolds.

So far I have spent approximately $280 on on all my cloth diapering materials. I also use re-usable cloth wipes (this was my husband's suggestion). I purchased a couple packs of cotton detailing rags from the car section at Wal-Mart for $3 each and cut them up into wipe-size strips. They have lasted me 15 months and counting. Most of these materials I'll be able to use for my second and most likely my third child as well. I may have to replace a few covers here and there, but the prefolds will probably last us forever because they're so well-made.

Since cloth diapers have to be laundered, there is also an expense for the water and energy required to do so. It's possible to wash cloth diapers by hand, but I have no desire to attempt this. I own a used washer and dryer which cost us $125 for both. I don't include that in my cost for diapers because I would have purchased those regardless.

When I decided to write this post I hadn't actually crunched numbers to determine exactly how much we were spending per month on laundering our diapers. It seems that utilities are higher here than where we moved from, so I decided it was time to know for sure how much we were really saving by using cloth diapers. This wasn't easy. In a nutshell, I figured out how many gallons of water my washer used per wash cycle, I multiplied that three times since I do a pre-wash, a regular wash, and a rinse, and then I multiplied that by 15 since that's the approximate number of washes I do per month. Then I multiplied that by cost- per-gallon of water. Cost per gallon is easily obtained by dividing your water bill by number of gallons used. This told me that we spend approximately $6 per month for the water used to wash diapers. To determine how many kilowatts per hour we used to launder our diapers, I recorded our kwh reading prior to starting a load of diapers. As soon as both the washing and drying were finished, I recorded the kwh reading again. Then I recorded it once after the same time interval it took to launder the diapers had passed, except without running the washer or the dryer. I then subtracted the difference between the two time intervals and determine that was how many kwh it took to launder my diapers. If I were to be more precise, I would do this over again several times to get a consistent figure. It came out to 3 kwh. I multiplied that by how much each kwh cost and then multiplied that by 15 (number of loads a month) and it comes out to about $6. So it cost us approximately $12 per month to launder our diapers.

So over the course of two years, I will have spent approximately $568 total on cloth diapers. In addition, I keep disposables on hand for any time we're traveling, at church, or away from the house longer than a couple hours. I probably spend approximately $5 a month on disposables. Sometimes less, sometimes more. So total cost for diapering my baby for 2 years comes out to around $688 to $700. We're looking forward to that price going down on our second kiddo since we won't have to purchase a whole new lot of cloth diapers. I've read estimates that diapering a baby in only disposables for two years can be in the ballpark of $1200 to $2000 depending on what kind of diapers you're purchasing.

Pros:

- They're cheaper.

- They help you be more self-reliant. I don't feel like I'm a slave to always looking for deals on diapers.

- Some babies experience less diaper rash in cloth.

- They're better for the environment.

Cons:

- They require a little extra work.

- Laundering can get tricky because you have to use certain detergents that won't ruin the cloth.

- They require a decent amount of research before you plunge to make a purchase.

In House Barbershop

Mens’ haircuts are really overpriced. I don’t know of a place in town that offers one for less than $15, and with the expected tip, it’s even more. Of course that’s a lot less than a woman’s cut, but men’s cuts are so ridiculously simple (at least the clean-cut, classic type) that paying $15 seems silly. My wife does a great job of cutting my hair and I actually trust her more than the barber to do it right. And she doesn't charge me a cent. Crazy.

The tradition actually started when I was a teenager and my brothers and I talked mom into buying us clippers and letting us teach ourselves to cut hair. She cringed at the first few attempts, but we got better with practice and saved a lot of money. Even with a conservative estimate of a haircut only once every two months, and using the $15 figure, that’s six cuts a year = $90 in savings. The only up front cost is the clippers, but you can get a great set with lots of attachments for around $40.

Maybe if grad school doesn’t pan out, I’ll become a barber :).

Finding Deals Online

There are many couponing websites out there. Ones that teach you how to use coupons or what things may be on sale. I have two websites that I use quite frequently. One is hip2save.com and the other is groupon.com. I love hip2save because you can get a lot of free stuff off of it. It tells you about freebies going on, or great online sales or deals as well as in store sales and which stores have coupons available, etc. I used this site a lot while Christmas shopping and got most of my Christmas gifts at least 25-50% off. Last year I even got some things for free because they posted about a store having a coupon for $10 off any purchase.  I've also received other free products for signing up for emails or liking different companies on facebook. Great website for saving money.
Groupon is another favorite. They provide discount coupons for local places. They have many different coupons for restaurants, spas, entertainment, hotels, etc. The deals are usually at least 50% off but usually even more. We have used groupons that I've bought for cheap dates.
I highly recommend that if you are in looking to save money using these websites can really help out!

Switch to CFLs

A couple years ago I was helping a friend move. He handed me a box of incandescent light bulbs and asked me to remove the compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) throughout the house and replace them with the incandescent ones. He explained that when they had moved in, they had installed all CFLs and had saved a lot on their energy bills. Because CFLs are more expensive, they wanted to take them along as they moved. The next time we were at Sam’s Club, I bought a package of CFLs, noting that they put out the same amount of light with less than a quarter of the energy use. As we’ve gradually transitioned to the CFLs, there has been a decrease in our energy bills. Now, I’m not sure how much of the decrease is attributable to the CFLs and how much to my increased awareness about energy use in general, but I’m positive it has helped.

There are disadvantages to CFLs. They take a couple minutes to reach full brightness, and the light they emit is not as warm and pleasant as that from incandescents. As mentioned above, CFLs are more expensive, but that seems to be more than offset by two factors: they don’t seem to burn out as often and they use far less energy. Unfortunately, they contain a bit of mercury, so you have to be careful when one breaks, but you have to be careful when any light bulb breaks, right? For me, the energy savings outweigh the downsides.

It’s worth mentioning that I’m absolutely NOT in favor of Congress forcing us to move from the incandescent to CFLs. It’s none of their business and one of those things that would largely happen over time without a mandate anyway. I use CFLs because the savings in energy use translates into saving me money.