This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and Walmart Family Mobile. All opinions are mine alone. #Save4Summer #CollectiveBias

Wait – hold on here.  I’ve already had a kid and it was expensive.  The amount of crap you have to buy is out of control.  But, when the heck did having a second newborn cost this much?!?  I feel like I’m having these awful flashbacks to receiving Amazon.com boxes every single day at my old apartment when we had a first tiny baby.  Oh, nope.  That’s not flashbacks – that’s the real deal.  And it’s happening at my new home for my new tiny baby.  So I got to thinking – what can I do to relieve some of these costs?  Because if the spending continues the way it did with our first tiny baby – we’ll be broke by the end of the year.  Here’s the top 5 ways I can think of…



1. Sort through old clothes:  True, Rhys is a boy, and my new tiny baby is a girl.  I get it. But, guess what – Rhys’ old clothes are still good. Which means, it’s still good for my new tiny baby too. My daughter doesn’t know that she’s wearing a little boys outfit, and I’m fine with that.  It just saved me an extra 12 bucks that I would have normally spent buying some stupid bow outfit or whatever.  Hand me downs are the best.  Trust me.  Now I just have to find a way to politely tell people that it’s my girl that loves her football outfit when we’re in public.
2. Don’t buy the nonsense stuff: How many burp cloths does a baby really need? Do you really need the all organic, non GMO, grass fed, air purified, sheep skin, hemp laced pillow cover? Or, god, here’s one: the alarm that goes off when the baby stops moving in her crib.  Duh – the kid stops moving when she SLEEPS! It always goes off.  People have been so trained to buy this stuff that we DON’T need.  Listen, the kid needs clothes, food, diapers, a bed, a swing , maybe a pacifier and a swaddle.  Everything after that is just nonsense.  I promise, you don’t have to buy the sheets made of bamboo fiber and bits of baby seal skin to be safe. Stop worrying about whether or not dye will coarse into her blood stream just by touching it. It won’t. Get the normal stuff that costs a reasonable amount of money.  When you do this, it’ll literally save you hundreds of dollars.
3. Don’t buy a double stroller yet: you probably still have a baby carrier from your first kid.  Instead of going out and buying the Lamborghini of the stroller world that you THINK you need, just spare yourself the 300-400 and wear the newborn while you take your other kid for a walk in the single stroller you already own.  Trust me, you can get away with this idea for a LONG time.  Of course, you’ll eventually need one, but you can push this cost off until the initial flood of investment for the newborn finally subsides.
4. Get rid of your cable: I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, cable companies have the best racket going on this entire planet.  They charge whatever they want, whenever they want for however long they want.  And it’s all funny money.  There’s no actual value to their product.  But, you can fight back and subscribe to things like Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV, HBO Now, etc. You will literally save close to a thousand dollars in your first year.  (And as you’re well aware, with a newborn – you need to have entertainment. So you better have some medium that will help you catch up on all of the The Gilmore Girls episodes)
5. Switch out of your big company cell phone plan: Here’s another “funny money” notion – cell phones.  Why is it that a company like Verizon can charge over $150 dollars per month for cell phone service (for ONE Phone) and the Walmart Family Mobile Plan can only charge $29.88 per month (for the first line) and STILL include: unlimited talk, text, and data for up to 1GB of 4G LTE data?  There is literally no question as to which service you should choose.  There’s no catch either – you can still get great smart phones like the LG Leon (which I love) for $99.00 and still be able to take care of everything you normally would do on the Verizon phone.  Again, for the savings of $130 per month – it’s a no brainer.
Will these five savings ideas save you? God no.  You still have to buy all the diapers, the wipes, more clothes (especially if you have two babies of different sex) toys, bumbos. and all the other stuff you threw out after you had the first kid. There’s a lot of money that has to be thrown around.  But, you don’t have to be SLAVE to the cottage industry of newborns and what it is compelling you to buy.  This isn’t WALL – E where everyone has to purchase stuff from Buy n Large.  This list is just the beginning to find out what best suits you and your family.  
Heck, maybe you can save so much money from this list that you can go and have a huge fourth of July party to help make you feel human again after being stuck in the house so long with the new baby?  I know that’s what we’re going to do.
Now I just have to find out where to get those darn fireworks….
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Disclaimer: All prices for phones and plans included in this post are accurate as of the date of posting; however, these prices are subject to change. Please refer to http://cbi.as/ax84 or your local Walmart for current pricing.