Car seat options

When I first found out I was expecting Baby Savvy, I immediately started researching baby products and attempted to determine what we needed and didn't need (let me tell you, it feels like I still learn new stuff in this area every day). Likewise, I wanted to make sure we spent money on quality products when necessary, and purchased used or inexpensive products when those products would suffice. One thing we decided was very important, and worth the extra expenditure, was a good car seat. I wanted something safe, comfortable, easy to use, and that would serve us for a long period of time. We decided on a Marathon Convertible Car Seat for Baby Savvy to use after he outgrew his infant seat. At his six month pediatrician appointment, we discovered Baby Savvy was too long for his infant seat. So we installed the Marathon. We've loved it from the minute it was installed. It is so easy to use and well designed. Baby Savvy is comfortable, we know he is safe, and I don't feel like I'm battling his car seat every time I put him in or take him out. We are debating buying its smaller cousin, the Roundabout Convertible Car Seat, for use in our Civic. We are trying to get into a car seat rental program through the county we live in... if they have a seat that fits in the Civic we will try that first. (Note to new or expecting parents - check with your local hospitals to see if they have a car seat rental program. We found out ours does and it is an amazingly cheap $5 for six months - yes, less than $1 per month! Their seat selection is small, and stocked with very utilitarian models, but if they have one that fits our little coupe we will definitely go that route.) I really like that both the Marathon and Roundabout will work until Baby S is ready for a booster, to me that helps justify the extra cost of these seats. Though May 31, Amazon is offering 20% off on the purchase of two Britax products (this includes accessories like covers and bases), plus their usual free Super Saver Shipping. That is an incredible deal, you will rarely find these seats on sale. I waited for three months to get 10% off at Target.com, and I believe I still paid shipping. The coupon code is BRITAX20. An extra added bonus of the Britax seats is that additional covers in many colors and prints are available... buy a new car with different color interior? Buy a new cover to match. Permanent grape juice stain combined with ground-in goldfish? Buy a new cover. Having another baby and just want your old seat to look fresh and new? Buy a new cover. Passing your seat on to a friend or relative? Add a new cover and make it an extra nice gift!

A green offer!

I posted this over on Baby on a Budget, but I figured there might be some Savvy readers who would be interested too. I'm testing an affiliate program with Abby's Lane, and they are offering 5% off everything in their store (excluding Ergo carriers) though this link. If you are thinking about trying cloth diapering, or looking to build a diaper stash (check their packages page!), this is your chance. Shipping is free on orders over $50. Abby's Lane also stocks baby carriers, soft-soled shoes, accessories, clothing, Babylegs, toys... We use two of the diapers that Abby's Lane stocks as night-time diapers... the Baby Beehinds Bamboo one-size, and the Swaddlebees Organic Cotton one-size. They both get the Mr. Savvy Seal of Approval (he's gets Baby Savvy ready for bed every night). There's also some very economical prefolds (great for newborns) as well as a huge selection of super cute pocket diapers (a favorite among many cloth-diapering households).

Green-Up Your Clean-Up

I was listening to Wisconsin Public Radio this morning, and they had a great show on green cleaning. While I've always tried to be frugal when it comes to cleaning supplies (yet I somehow have an entire closet full of the latest orange-lemon-pineapple-lavendar-parsely-pine-gets-the-grease-off-without-streaks cleaners), I never really cared about how "green" they were.... until I had a baby. The author of Green-Up Your Cleanup (Green House) was on and she had some great ideas for both green and frugal cleaning supplies and methods. One that really caught my attention was a dishwasher powder, I made mental note of the recipe... 1/2 cup citric acid (ordered online) 1 1/2 cup borax (available at the grocery or Target-type store) 15 drops of lemon essential oil (option) Mix and store in a container with a tight-fitting lid. Use as you would your normal dishwasher powder.

Green efforts

I hope everyone found their own way to celebrate Earth Day earlier this week. I intended to write a long post about our family's "green" efforts, as well as the many things we need to improve on, but I didn't have the time to actually sit down and get it all out of my head. I will give you an update on some of the things that were in my New Year's resolutions that related to living green. One of our resolutions was to become paper napkin and paper towel free in our house. So far, we have been doing really well. We purchased a huge bulk pack of paper towels (12 double rolls) back in November or December and we still have most of that pack left. We have been using cloth napkins at mealtimes, and cloth towels to clean up spills. The overall impact on our lives has been negligible. It took about two weeks to get used to using cloth, and we no longer even keep paper towels on the counter. The extra laundry isn't even noticeable, I don't think it even adds up to a load a month. I started with the premise that a cloth napkin was a cloth napkin was a cloth napkin, however we have found that we definitely prefer some napkins over others. I recommend that if you choose to switch to cloth napkins that you only buy napkins that are 100% cotton, linen, or hemp. We have some that are synthetic-blends, and while they look the nicest new, they don't do the job as well and they don't improve with age. Our absolute favorite napkins are hemp napkins made by Ecolution. I have bought some napkins at thrift stores, but so far all my thrift finds have been synthetics, and well, I can see why they ended up at the thrift store. Another one of my resolutions was to compost. That hasn't been going as well, but the spring weather has renewed my resolve. We actually have three wonderful compost bins that were built by the previous owner of our house, and we spent some time last weekend cleaning them out and prepping them for our yard and kitchen waste. I haven't purchased a compost bucket yet (mostly because I'm cheap), but I plan to come up with some type of lidded container for organic kitchen scraps in the next couple weeks. For now I'm using a bowl and just dumping it outside very frequently. The good news is that the space under the sink that we used to use to store massive quantities of paper towels will now be the perfect spot for our compost bucket. One area that we really have lots of room for improvement is in the amount of driving we do. We both have long commutes (miles-wise, not necessarily time-wise). I don't have any ready solutions for making this better, other than our efforts to consolidate trips and eliminate recreational driving. Mr. Savvy does try to carpool when he can, but the addition of Baby Savvy means I have to do both pickup and drop-off if Mr. Savvy is car-pooling. We are continuing to look at our options, and take small wins when we can get them, but for now I don't see a long-term solution in our future. I'd love to hear about your efforts to go green... even in small ways. I'll do a post of the suggestions if I get a lot of responses, and hopefully I'll find new ways to make our household more sustainable.

a post of posts

ahhh! I've been meaning to post for weeks, but can never seem to find the time. I've been back at work full time for two weeks, Mr. Savvy has been home with Baby (although he's grown so much it seems weird to me to call him Baby). Life's been chaotic, but hopefully things will be settling down. I didn't refinance our house, like I posted a couple months ago. We would have had to bring money to the closing, and I wasn't comfortable with that considering our 0% credit card debt, as well as Mr. Savvy's employment status (he's hopefully back to work on Monday after many, many delays with his employer), and I was just working part time. I did get our taxes mailed off... we are getting a very large refund. We increased our withholdings last year from 1 to 5 with the anticipation of Baby Savvy and the acquisition of the apartment building, but we are still getting almost $6,000 back. When people talk about the tax benefits of owning rental property they aren't joking, it worked out very well for us this year. Baby Savvy is wonderful. He just had his six month appointment, and he weighs 16 lbs and 10.2 ounces and is 27 1/2 inches long. We were going to start vaccinating him at six months, but we are going to wait one more month before we begin. He had an ear infection (which we didn't know about until the appointment) and we want to make sure he is completely healthy before he gets any shots. He started solids the day he turned six months by snatching a small piece of roast chicken from Mr. Savvy... we took that as his way of telling us he's ready to eat. Chicken is so far his favorite food and the only thing that he eats consistently. I didn't update our net worth last month. I checked it on Yodlee and it was not good. We had about $1,000 in unanticipated expenses, combined with my 80% pay and Mr. Savvy's unemployment led to dips in just about every category except real estate equity. I'll give us another month to hope that it evens out... I have acquired a new hobby, which contributed more than I'm willing to admit to last month's poor net worth performance. I started knitting. I took a class in February and I was instantly addicted. So far I've finished four items, and I have two more in progress. It isn't cheap to start-up, but I get a lot of enjoyment for the money. It didn't take long to build up a nice stash of beautiful wool yarn either. I hope everyone else is well. I don't check my blog roll often enough and probably haven't read it thoroughly in months.

Group showing

I had the group showing last Saturday... here's the stats: Seven people responded to my Craigslist ad and wanted a showing. Five people said they could make it to the showing. The other two never responded (this is typical of Craigslist responses). Three people showed up to the showing (once again, typical that there were two no-shows). Two people expressed interest in the apartment at the showing and took applications. One person contacted me after the showing and wanted an application. So, in about an hour's time I was able to show the apartment to three parties, and weed out the two no-shows (that's my pet peeve, when I make a trip and the other person doesn't show up). All three of the people that took apps seemed promising, so hopefully at least one will apply and want the place.... if not I will just do another group showing.

Net worth update - up $5,755

This month didn't end up near as bad as I had thought. I received my annual bonus at work, but the majority of it went towards living expenses as Mr. Savvy isn't working, I'm working part-time, and we are paying for daycare that isn't even getting used. Hopefully the weather will start to cooperate soon and Mr. Savvy will be back at work in a week or two. The way my part-time phase back from maternity leave worked was that I was very, very part time for about a month (12-16 hour weeks). I slowly work my way up to 3 and 4-day weeks this month and have about four more weeks of 80% time before I'm expected back full time. It's a great benenfit for moms and families and I wish it lasted longer than 12 weeks! We are still somehow making progress on our 0% credit card debt. I'm hoping to find some renewed resolve this month and make some serious progress over the next two months. I would love to get it down to less than $23,000 before May 1. I have also neglected including our contributions to Baby Savvy's 529 in our net worth. I add them this month. We contribute $250/month to his college education. February January Difference Retirement 165,365 162,070 3,295 Real Estate Equity 84,029 83,305 725 Stocks 2,192 2,396 -203 Cash vs. Credit Card Debt -26,216 -27,923 1707 529 1,171 0 1,171 TOTAL 226,524 220,787 5,755

group showings

We have another tenant moving out at the end of April. I'm going to try something new this time and schedule group showings in order to minimize the time I spend showing the open apartment and the disruption to our renters. I really don't know how this will go as in the past I've always tried my very best to accommodate the schedules of the people interested in seeing the apartment... sometimes resulting in no-shows or people running extremely late. I don't have a whole lot of time to spend on showings, so I'm really hoping this works. Any other landlords do this? Does it work well for you?

money blues

I've got the money blues right now. I just received my annual bonus at work, but most of it is already spent. Mr. Savvy has been off work a few weeks due to weather (it has been insanely cold and snowy here), and I've been working part-time since January and haven't had a full paycheck since December. Most of January and part of February were very part time, some weeks working as little as 12 hours, but I'm phasing back into full time at the beginning of April. Despite Mr. Savvy staying home with Baby Savvy, we still have to pay for daycare, per our contract, or we lose our spot. So that's another expense on our already feeble income. It is nice to have the munchkin home with a parent though, so I can't be too down about that. We've also just been spending way too much money. Lots of incidentals, lots of fun things, lots of convenience items. We've definitely done our share to keep the economy going. However, starting today I'm going to work very hard to stop spending on unnecessary things. I'm going back to the old Savvy Saver bad habit buster of doing a Saving Spree for the remainder of February and all of March. No new clothes, no eating out, no new gadgets or incidentals... no shopping. Period. I can't be too bummed though, as I've maintained our 401(k) contributions and Roth IRA contributions, and I'm still pu