Moms spend a whole lot on their babies every month, even if they don’t realize that.
Baby diapers are some of the baby items you buy impulsively without even trying to look at the prices. But have you ever asked how much those nappies cost you per month?
Here Is How Much Diapers Cost Each Month:
If you buy naturally without actively sourcing for coupons or discounts, you may be paying anywhere around £75 to £100 per month on diapers.
While this may not be quite extraneous, you can save up to two-thirds of this cost by following simple tips to help you spend less on nappies every month.
Nappies could be more expensive than you initially thought. In this post, you’ll learn the statistics leading up to the conclusion of the average monthly cost of nappies.
How Much Do Nappies Cost Per Month?
If you’re raising your first baby, the chances are high that you’re using non-reusable diapers. With non-reusable nappies, you’ll be covering the cost of a new diaper every time you change one for your baby.
If your baby is still relatively young, that will happen anywhere around ten times a day. At the average price of £.25 apiece, you should be spending £75 per month on diapers only, and in some cases, significantly more.
If you pay this much for diapers per month, you’ll be paying £900 annually buying diapers for your baby.
While you may not be paying this much if you use reusable diapers, the statistics clearly show that most people don’t.
With 95% of mums in the United States using disposable diapers, and the rest mixing between reusable and non-reusable ones, most US mums pay close to £75 per month on nappies.
If this doesn’t sound so significant to you, it’s probably because you don’t understand how much money you can potentially save otherwise.
Over the next few sections, you’ll learn a couple of tips that will help you save money on nappies per month, helping you save money for other one-time purchases for your baby.
This Is How Much Nappies Cost On Average:
- Per Day: £2.50
- Per Week: £17.50
- Per Month: £75.00
- Per Year: £900.00
- Lifetime (one baby): £1350 to £2250
Why Do Nappies Cost So Much?
Diapers are deceptively cheap at first glance. When most people discover how much they’re spending in 30 days, they lash out angrily: why are diapers so expensive?
The answer to the question isn’t as easy as it seems. However, we can build up to the answer by examining the different expenses you’re required to cover after having a baby. There are one-time expenses and ongoing expenses.
They’re as simple as they sound from the surface: one-time expenses are those expenses you don’t have to cover more than once, or twice if you’re not very lucky.
They may look very expensive, and you usually cheapen out on them due to their steep price tag, but you can’t avoid getting some for your baby.
One-time expenses may include items like baby playmats, cribs, bassinets, etc. While some of them will last while your baby grows, most grow obsolete pretty quickly, and your baby will never need them again.
On the other hand, there are ongoing expenses. These expenses look deceptively cheap from the surface, making it easier to purchase them on impulse.
However, you’ll need to continuously make these purchases to keep your baby healthy, and that puts a strain on your wallet.
Ongoing expenses include the cost of your baby’s diapers, clothes, food, and health. Since you feel comfortable spending on these, your brain tricks you into thinking you aren’t buying too much anyway.
However, when you start to analyze your purchases, discovering you spent hundreds of dollars on nappies in just 30 days, you start seeing it as a problem.
If you try to save on the cost of your diaper, you should be spending a lot less than the average mum.
How to Save Money on Nappies
It’s clear; you shouldn’t be paying hundreds of dollars on diapers for your baby. In this section, I’ll outline some tips for saving money without compromising either your baby’s safety or your convenience.
If you’re tired of spending £900 annually on mere nappies, here are some expert tips to help you cut down that cost, making nappies more affordable.
- Request for Diapers at Baby Showers
Baby showers are a perfect opportunity to amass some interesting and occasionally expensive gifts to help raise your baby.
While most mothers get a lot of unnecessary but expensive gifts, nobody sees nappies as “interesting” enough to shower a new or expectant mother.
While you may be tempted to go for a better-looking gift, that gift will become obsolete in a matter of months.
The only thing you’ll surely want more of is a diaper, and you should encourage people to gift you some at your baby shower.
Since your baby will quickly outgrow small diapers, you can request variable sizes. That way, you won’t have to pay outrageous amounts for nappies in the long run.
- Buy In Bulk
If you can estimate the number of diapers you’ll be needing over time; you can save some money by purchasing them in bulk.
Purchasing at retail prices gives you significantly higher prices per diaper, which doesn’t exactly contribute to a goal of cost-effectiveness
If you can link up with other mums that need diapers, you can put resources together to buy in bulk. You should also go to stores that are famous for giving good prices on bulk items.
Some suggestions include Costco and Sam’s Club.
- Exchange Diapers with Other Sizes
If you requested people to gift you diapers at your baby shower, you’d almost certainly have leftover diapers in a specific size, probably due to your baby outgrowing them.
If this happens, you don’t have to discard the rest of the nappies; you can exchange with other mums who need your size of diapers and have the size you need.
A good place to start is on Facebook. You can join local groups for mums in your county, state, or area. You can find connections on mum forums over the web, and you can even see active threads about people making the same request.
- Use Coupons
Contrary to what you believe, coupons help you save money. If you can get manufacturer coupons on some of the nappies that you buy, you’ll find yourself saving hundreds of dollars per year without even trying.
With coupon tracking getting effortless, there is no valid reason why you wouldn’t track them actively. All it takes is to drop an email across multiple coupon tracking sites, and you might get a 50% off on your next purchase.
If you shop frequently for nappies, Coupons.com and Savings.com are some of your best friends. While Coupons.com focuses entirely on helping you get coupons, Savings.com tries to get you price reductions in any possible way, making them mutually inclusive.
- Try Reusable Diapers
While cloth diapers are generally frowned upon by mums, there’s no doubt that they remain one of the best ways to save up on diapers.
If you’re using a cloth-based reusable nappy, you should expect to spend around $600 to $900 for three years; the time a baby spends wearing a nappy.
If that doesn’t sound like you’re saving a lot, you may be spending up to $3,000 otherwise. If you’re willing to try out a cloth diaper, you may end up tolerating it and saving lots of money.
- Shop lesser-known and affordable brands
While expensive diapers usually make high-quality diapers, you don’t need to pay outrageous amounts to get diapers for your baby.
Instead of spending hundreds of dollars buying diapers per month, you can get more value for your money by shopping for more affordable brands.
You can also use different brands for your baby without any known consequences. Since most brands don’t go on sale at once, you can keep using a certain brand of nappies until another goes on sale and you switch.
If your baby shows any kind of resistance or side effects to any brand of diapers, you may want to avoid that specific brand.
Your baby’s health is a lot more valuable than saving a few dollars off the cost of an expensive nappy.
How to Budget Ahead for Diaper Sizes
If you are buying nappies in bulk, you must have some insight as to what your baby will be needing in the long run. You must estimate the average diaper size for your baby and for how long they’ll be wearing it.
If you don’t have previous experience raising babies, it may be quite difficult to plan. Also, every baby is different, and your baby may not follow most of the “size buying guide” you’ll find online.
However, you shouldn’t also totally discard these buying guides, because they’re usually pretty close to what you actually need.
Buying undersized diapers isn’t a reversible mistake too. You can either return it for a refund or exchange it with mums who have the exact sizes you currently need.