A reader commented on one of my posts about cloth diapers, wondering if cloth really are more economical than disposables. People choose one or the other for a variety of reasons – in our case we chose cloth because of the environmental impact, wanting to avoid chemicals next to our baby’s tush, and of course – frugality. I do all sorts of “green” things, but most of them are also cheaper than the non-green alternative, and diapers are no exception.

So I thought I’d break down the numbers, which I hadn’t actually done until now. Our son is 12 weeks old. Here’s what we’ve spent so far:

• $20 on used sheets and t-shirts at thrift stores. we also used hand-me-down receiving blankets that we got for free. And I had enough left over from the sheets to make a ring sling, so the actual cost for the diapers is even lower – but I’ll leave it at $20 for these calculations.
• $10 on a large container of all natural liquid detergent from Costco. We use it for all our laundry – it has no chemicals in it (the cleaners are all citrus based) and works great. I use two tablespoons for a load of diapers, and the container holds 1.56 gallons, so I think it last quite a while if I only used it for diapers.
• $6 on two large containers of vinegar. I’ve used up one since our baby was born, but I use vinegar for everything from cleaning toilets to conditioning my hair. For diapers, a container would do 42 loads (I use 1/2 cup in a downey ball for each load).
• $8 on two large bags of baking soda. I use this for everything too, so I’m not sure how long it would last if I were just using it for diapers. But I’m still working on the bag I bought before our son was born. I put about 1/2 cup of baking soda into the first wash cycle when I wash diapers. The second wash has the detergent and the vinegar. That’s all I use.
• Water costs $2.80 for 1000 gallons in our town. Our washing machine uses 40 gallons for a load, but I use the medium setting for diapers, so I’m going to estimate 30 gallons. I wash each load twice, so 60 gallons to wash a load of diapers, which I do about three times per week. That’s 180 gallons per week – which costs 50 cents. So in the 12 weeks that we’ve been washing diapers, we’ve spent $6 on water.
• Drying is free. I never use the dryer for anything anymore. We can’t have clotheslines here, but I have four drying racks (all came from thrift stores) and I use them to dry all our laundry, including diapers. I’m amazed at how well the sun bleaches stains out of the diapers. When I take them out of the washer, most of them still have stains. After a couple hours on a drying rack in the back yard, there are never any stains at all. It’s like magic – I love it!

So the grand total so far is $50. The detergent, vinegar, and baking soda I have now will last at least another four months, so the only extra expense we’ll have will be water, at about $2/month. I don’t know how much electricity we’re using to wash the diapers. Our total combined electricity/gas bill is usually below $100/month, even with the extra money we pay for wind energy. The usage comparison from this year to last year has actually shown a decrease in electricity usage, so the extra to run our washing machine and water heater a bit more is obviously not a lot.

Making our own diapers was a huge part of the cost savings here. But people who buy fancy cloth diapers can recoup most of their costs by selling them when they’re child doesn’t need them anymore (I went searching for used cloth diapers online before our son was born, and couldn’t believe how close in price they were to the new ones). If you’re not into sewing or buying fancy diapers, you could also buy inexpensive prefolds. Cloth diapers have become a bit of a trend lately, but there’s really no need to use brand name diapers – they’re just going to get pooped on anyway.

Anyway, I’m glad I broke this down and saw exactly what we’re spending. By the time our son is seven months old, we will have spent about $60 to keep him in diapers. I haven’t bought any disposables, but I doubt I’d be able to get 7 months worth for $60.

And to reward yourself for reading through yet another post about diapers, go check out Cake Wrecks.  I promise you will laugh.

I just noticed that this post never published last week.  It was languishing away in my drafts folder, so I figured better late than never, eh?  Fellow Frugal Blog Network member Shanti hosted the Festival of Frugality at Antishay Ventenne last week – thanks Shanti!

I love the post from My Two Dollars about borrowing or renting instead of buying. We’re all about the library for entertainment. We need an extra long ladder to finish painting our house, and we’re going to rent one this weekend (even on Craigs List, the ladders we need were at least $125 – we can rent one for a day for a lot less than that – and how often do you need a 36 foot ladder?) update – we rented a 40 foot ladder for $26.  Much better than spending $100 to buy one!

Squawkfox has a great post about using reusable shopping bags instead of plastic or paper. We’ve gotten so much better about this – we keep our reusable bags in our car, so they’re there when we get to the store. I have a basket on my bike, and whenever I go to the stores near our house, I take reusable bags in my bike basket. The only problem is what to use to pick up after our dog… but my MIL brings us newspaper bags whenever she visits – those are better anyway, since they’re much smaller, so there’s less waste every time we pick up after the dog.

I just found the motherload of giveaways. Go check out the Bloggy Giveaways Carnival.  There are currently 581 freebies up for grabs – sign up and see what you can win!  Good luck!

I got an email from a reader over the weekend, asking if I knew of any credit cards offering balance transfers without a fee, and zero percent interest on the transfered amount. I did some searching this morning, and every offer I saw for zero percent interest on balance transfers includes a balance transfer fee, although there are still some really good balance transfer offers out there. I suppose it doesn’t hurt to see if you can get them to waive the fee for you – the worst that will happen is that they’ll say no. I’ve seen some cards that have a max of $75 for balance transfers, and others with a max of $90. If anybody knows of one with no fee for balance transfers, please leave a comment!

If you’re considering balance transfers, there are lots of issues to take into account. How much debt to do you want to transfer? If you only have $500 in credit card debt, it’s probably not worth the hassle and transfer fees (likely $15, as most cards seem to charge 3%). But the more debt you have, and the longer the zero percent interest period lasts, the more likely it is to be a good deal. Here’s a site I found that shows a comparison of several balance transfer credit cards, with the interest rates and balance transfer fees for each one. It looks like Discover has several good offers – one of the balance transfers we did several years ago was to a Discover card, and it worked very well for us. We got the zero percent rate for as long as we liked, provided we made one purchase each month on the card. So every month we’d buy something for a dollar, and keep extending our balance transfer offer. We did have to pay interest on the stuff we bought, but even after a couple years, it was only adding up to about a dollar a month. That balance transfer saved us hundreds of dollars in interest, but it did require diligence on our part to make sure that we kept the deal going. Obviously the savings depend on how high your interest rate currently is, how long the introductory balance transfer offer will last (try to get at least 12 months), and how high the interest rate will be once the real rate kicks in. Finally, I would say that once you’ve done the balance transfer, do everything you can to pay off the balance by the time the introductory rate expires. And whatever you do, don’t be late with a payment – all bets are off if you don’t live up to the terms of the deal, and you could find that all of a sudden you’re paying double digit interest rates along with late fees. Of course this can happen with any credit card, but it’s especially painful if you go through all the effort of a balance transfer, get the zero percent interest rate, and then lose it because you miss a payment.

We’re so close to the end of our painting project. We got our HOA to give us an extension to the end of the month, and it looks like we’re going to make it. We’ll probably have to spend two evenings this week and then it will be done. (actually, it looks like about two hours worth of work left, but every time I estimate a timeframe for a home improvement project, it takes us three times that long, so I’m going to give us two evenings and not be disappointed).

This weekend, we worked on the really high parts of the house. The top of the chimney, and the gables at the front and back of the house on the upper story. Our 22 foot ladder wouldn’t reach them, so we rented a ladder. We had thought about buying a used one on Craigs list, but everything we found was at least $100. We rented a 40 foot ladder for $26, and now we don’t have to store it anywhere. This is the first time in over five years that we’ve ever needed a ladder taller than the one we have, so it didn’t make much sense to buy one and have to store it. We picked up the rental ladder yesterday at about 11:30 am. We worked until dark last night – about 8:30. Then we got up at 5am and were outside painting by the time it was light. (bonus – it’s much cooler at 6am than it is at noon… something we night owls don’t usually get to enjoy). We worked all morning, taking turns on the high ladder. It’s nerve racking being up that high, and very tiring – probably because every muscle in your body is tense the whole time, hoping that you’re not going to end up skewered on the picket fence way down there. So we found that it worked better if we switched off, with one of us working on the shorter ladder and the other on the tall ladder. Half the battle was moving the darn thing. It weighed 200 pounds – seriously. Getting it into position would take us at least half an hour each time we needed to move it. Guess we got our workout in today.

We finished the last high spot, got the ladder loaded back on the roof racks of my trusty civic, and returned it to the store, with two minutes to spare. Now we only need to do the back side of the chimney (we just have to stand on the roof behind the chimney to do that) and one section of trim where we can stand on a patio roof. We’ve bought 10 gallons of wall paint, 3 gallons of trim paint, and 16 tubes of caulk. When you add in the ladder rental, the grand total comes to $360. Not bad for a full exterior paint job. We started about the middle of June, but we took a couple weeks of recently when my husband’s family was in town. My family pitched in one day last month and helped us make huge progress – otherwise we’d probably be working on it until September. It’s looking great, and although painting a house is not that high on my summer fun activities list, it feels great to have done it, and I’m so glad that we did it ourselves for just the cost of materials, instead of paying someone else to do it.

Next up… the HOA says we have to paint our fence. I think we’re going to put in a vinyl fence instead – either way, that will be next weekend’s project.

It’s Sunday… time for the weekly roundup from the Frugal Blog Network. We have a new member – a big welcome to Kelly from Almost Frugal. Kelly gave me some cloth diapers earlier this year, and my son is still wearing them. I’ve had a soft spot for her every since, so I’m thrilled that she’s joined the FBN. She lives in France, so she brings some international flair to the network. And she has a great post this week, on the ABCs of Frugality. I see myself in a lot of those letters…

Andy from Tight Fisted Miser had a rough week – he got robbed, and is having to get a new phone, keys, and possibly locks (and maybe a new job – check out his post about it). But he had a great post about his take on Dave Ramsey’s baby steps. I agree on the retirement savings. My husband and I both had 401k accounts when we left our corporate jobs several years ago. We rolled them over to IRAs, but didn’t contribute to them for the first year while we were getting our business going. We were just too broke. Then after a year, we started putting $100/month into each IRA, and gradually worked up until we now max them out. When we started contributing to the IRAs again, we had no emergency fund, and we had quite a bit of debt. But we knew we’d never get those years back as far as retirement contributions went. We’re now contributing to an emergency fund and don’t have any credit card debt, but our retirement funds are still priority over our emergency fund.

Shanti at Antishay Ventenne hosted the Festival of Frugality this week, and did a great job with it. If you haven’t visited it yet, check it out when you’re looking for good frugal ideas.

Not Made Of Money has a good post about how to stick to your shopping list and minimize the damage at the checkout when you go grocery shopping. Costco used to be our downfall on this – they always have stuff that you didn’t know you needed… But we’ve gotten better, mainly because we’re eating very little packaged or processed food these days. So our Costco trips tend to be for stuff like razor blades and frozen blueberries (and a few other things I suppose, since we spend at least $200/month there…)

Last year we sold my engagement ring and put the money into our HSA and my Roth IRA. Since I still liked the look of diamonds, but not the price or the ethical issues, we bought a new ring from Diamond Nexus Labs. It cost $231, and looks just as good a year later as it did when we first got it. I get far more compliments on it than I did on my original $2000 diamond ring, and I actually like this one better.

Last week, I got a gift card in the mail from Diamond Nexus Labs. It’s worth $100, but you have to spend $250 to redeem it. Their stuff is already very reasonably priced – I wish we had known about them when we first went shopping for an engagement ring… then we wouldn’t have had to take a $900 hit when we sold it. There is a ton of great stuff in the $250 range, and with the gift card, it would only cost $150.

I thought about buying a necklace, but I’m just not that much of a fancy jewelry girl. I love my engagement/wedding rings, but everything else I wear tends to be novelty stuff, not diamonds. But for someone who likes diamond jewelry, the gift card could be a lot of fun. So…. I’m going to give it away to one of my readers. All you have to do is leave a comment, and you’ll be entered in a random drawing. I’ll announce the winner on August 2nd (the gift card has to be redeemed by 9/30/08). (and no, DNL isn’t paying me to talk up their stuff – that would be sweet though…)

You can get two extra entries by writing a post on your own blog about this giveaway. Good luck!

And if you’re interested in entering to win literally hundreds of giveaways, check out the Bloggy Giveaway Carnival – there’s something for everyone… maybe today’s your lucky day!

Baby Cheapskate (a site I just found and am really enjoying) is having a diaper giveaway contest! She’s going to give 12 BumGenius 3.0 One Size cloth diapers to a lucky reader. Check out her post about the contest and see if you can win… the diapers are worth $200, so it’s a pretty big prize. If I won, I would only have to do a load of diapers every third day instead of every other day…. sounds good to me!

Cap at Stop Buying Crap has a great post from a couple weeks ago that I just found today. Check out five things I’ll never buy for my future kids. He’s got some good humor sprinkled in, but I have to agree with the serious points he makes – kids don’t need any of this stuff (I didn’t even know $20,000 playhouses existed!) They need love and attention, not computer games and DVD players. We just have one TV, and it dates back to the 90210 era. We are only ever going to have one TV, and there won’t be one in the car. My family managed to take plenty of road trips, and there were four children. Two is our max – so I think we should be able to handle driving with our child(ren) without adding a TV to the car.

I didn’t have a car until I graduated from college. I’ll encourage the same thing with our son, and we certainly won’t be paying for a car or gas or insurance if he chooses to get one before then. I remember when I was in college that parking permits were expensive and even then people would still have to circle the lots looking for a space – much easier to bike or walk to class. Anyway, by the time our son is old enough to drive, gas will probably be $50/gallon and he won’t be able to afford to drive even if we wanted him to.

Our son is nearly 3 months old. Our strategy so far has been to avoid shopping in places like Babies R Us or Target… you go in those places and see stuff that you never even knew you didn’t have. We’re doing just fine with the stuff we got as hand-me-downs and gifts. Our son does enjoy his vibrating bouncy chair and the play mat that has little toys hanging off of it. Both were recycled from other families that had outgrown them, and while they’re not fancy, they do the job. The playmat came with the mat and the crossed tubes above it, but no toys. So I took several small soft books with loops on them and tied them to the cross bars with yarn. He loves to grab at them, and we can lie on the floor next to him and read the stories to him while he grabs at the books.

I know that we can’t shelter our son from consumerism forever. One day he’ll be in school and he’ll want the same jeans/toys/phone/shoes, etc. that all the other boys have (but wanting and getting are two different things). I know I went through that phase for a lot of years myself. But for now, we’ll avoid consumerism wherever we can, and shower our little guy with our time and attention instead of with stuff.

I’ve made it very clear throughout my blog that I’m a fan of credit cards. My husband and I put all our purchases on one credit card, with the exception of Costco, where we use AmEx, since it’s the only credit card they take. We earn rewards on our cards, have a clear statement of where all our money goes every month, and can pay for everything with the click of a mouse at the end of the month. We’ve never been burned by credit cards, but that’s because we’ve been very careful with how we use them. During the first year after starting our own business, we barely made enough money to pay our mortgage. Pretty much everything else went on our credit card. For most of 2004, we were not able to pay the balance in full each month. Once we started making enough money to pay more than our mortgage and utilities, we started working in earnest to pay back our debts. We used balance transfer offers twice, taking advantage of zero percent interest for as long as we could. I kept careful track of when those offers expired, and we made sure that we focused on our highest interest debts first. We did pay plenty of interest on credit card debt in 2004 – 2005. But we minimized the damage, and came out the other side with our mortgage as our only debt, which we’re working to pay off as quickly as possible. Without credit cards, we’d have had a much tougher time in those early years of having our business. I know that we could have waited a few years and saved more money before quitting our jobs and starting a new business. But we were miserable at the jobs we had, and getting out of them as fast as possible was a huge priority. I guess that you could say that the interest we paid on credit card debts for those two years was the price we paid for not having to spend those years in jobs we hated. To me, that was worth it, although others might strongly disagree.

Most pf bloggers are squarely in one camp or the other when it comes to credit cards – either love em or hate em. I have no problem with credit cards, but you have to enter into the agreement with an understanding that the credit card company is in business to make a profit, and is far more concerned about their own bottom line than they are about yours. But isn’t this the case with any business? If you don’t trust yourself with credit, probably best to avoid it. But if you know that you’re careful with money, don’t spend beyond your means, and aren’t already in debt, you’ll probably do just fine with a credit card. But how do you choose a card? I got my first credit card when I was in college. I can’t remember how I chose which one I applied for, but I’m pretty sure that I just responded to the first mailing I got from a credit card company once I decided I wanted one. The other option was to sign up on campus and get a free t-shirt or bag of M&Ms… either way, I know it wasn’t a very scientific process. These days, my husband and I have a card that gives us a cash back reward – every time we get 10,000 points, they give us a $100 credit on our statement. For us, that’s much better than shopping through rewards catalogs, because we can spend the $100 on whatever we like – groceries, gas, etc.

I found a site that will help you compare options and find the best credit card for you, based on what you’re looking for. They are currently listing three cards with zero percent interest for at least a year on balance transfers, which is becoming harder to find these days (when we were at the peak of our debt, we were getting offers in the mail every other day for zero percent balance transfers, but they aren’t as easy to find now). So if you’re in the market for a credit card, do some shopping around and find the one that will work best for you. Whatever you do, don’t just sign up for one because they’re going to give you a free set of BBQ tools and a t-shirt.