Here are a few of the tricks I use, a couple of which you may have heard me talk about in the past:

1. I signed up for a few Subscribe & Save items through Amazon. All shipping is free, plus you save a little extra by signing up for a subscription. You control how often the items show up at your doorstep, and you can cancel anytime. The prices I’ve found, so far, are less with Subscribe & Save than local drugstore prices. You can get everything from laundry detergent to whitening strips to coffee. Really, anything you use fairly often.
2. Save everything you want and/or need in your Amazon cart, as long as you don’t need it immediately. Chances are excellent that the new set of dishes you’ve been eyeballing or all 10 seasons of “Friends” will go down in price eventually, sometimes WAY down in price. The best part? Every time you go to your shopping cart, all the price changes show up automatically so you can scope out the potential savings. I’ve saved a lot of pennies this way. The items stay in your cart for a very long time.
3. List your clothes and/or your kids’ clothes on eBay. Selling kids’ clothes in bundles seems to work particularly well, especially if they’re name brand. Use the money you get to buy new or used clothes, either locally or on eBay. I consider it a fun way to recycle. If I want a new pair of jeans or a new purse, often I’ll see what I can sell first so I can justify the purchase.
4. Buy clothing at the end of the season when it’s dirt cheap. For kids, guesstimate their sizes for the next season. If you’re off, well, you only wasted a few dollars and you can give it to Goodwill or sell it on eBay. Also scope the clearance racks whenever you are at the store because there are often amazing buys hiding on the rack. I almost never buy anything at full price. It pretty much goes against my conscience.

What are some of your money-saving tricks? Please share here!

Baby products are an $8.9 billion industry in the U.S., with hundreds of new products added to the lineup each year. With an ever increasing range of choices, and seemingly limitless options, shopping for a new baby can be daunting and expensive. Retailers and manufacturers are smart. They realize that new parents want the best for their baby and that they’re willing to shell out for the privilege. It’s no wonder that a typical middle-income family with one child in the U.S. will spend an average of $13,590 on baby’s first year alone!

“You can spend less, get better value, and still buy high-quality, safe products,” says Sandra Gordon, author of Consumer Reports Best Baby Products, (Tenth Edition). “And you don’t necessarily need to spend a bundle to get them.”

Gordon offers the following tips for making budget cuts that won’t compromise your baby’s safety, which should always be your top concern.

• Go with store-brand disposable diapers. Although Consumer Reports tests show that the name brands are the top-rated disposable diapers, because overall they tend to be more absorbent and fit better, you may find store brands more than adequate—and a cost cutter. You’ll save about 3 cents per diaper if, for example, you compare the cost of size 1 Par­ent’s Choice, Wal-Mart’s store-brand diapers, with Pampers, also size 1. Saving pennies per diaper may not seem like much, but with 10 changes per day (which is reasonable with an infant), you’d bank about $9 per month and $108 per year using the size 1 store brand diapers.

• Nix the convertible option when choosing a crib mattress. If you’re planning to convert your baby’s crib to a toddler bed, put this added feature in the “not necessary” category. While “dual firmness” convertible mattresses are available with an extra firm side for infants and a cushier, standard or memory foam on the other for toddlers, you don’t need to spend the extra money. These cost $220 for conventional types to $200 for natural fibers, but much less for a non-convertible mattress. Your baby will still be happy with a firm mattress when he becomes a toddler.

• Shopping cart covers—feel free to skip this purchase entirely. It’s not a must-have. In fact, using one may be more trouble than it’s worth. Keep in mind that the covers themselves can harbor harmful germs—from blood as well as mucus and feces—longer than a bare cart handle because the germs can get embedded in the fabric. That’s why it’s important to wash a shopping cart cover in hot water and a bleach-based disinfectant and dry it completely after every time you use it. Another reason I put shopping cart covers in the “optional” category: These days, many supermarkets supply sanitizing wipes for cleaning the cart handle and seat when you walk in, which can do a good job of reducing the germ load there. If wipes aren’t provided, keep a small supply of disinfecting wipes in your purse or diaper bag. Even after wiping, keep your baby from gnawing on the handle by bringing his favorite teething toy.

• Don’t buy designer duds. Babies may be able to wear them only once or twice before they outgrow them, which inspires new-parent guilt and the sense that the money could have been better spent on diaper, wipes, or formula. If you can’t resist, watch for sales at your favorite baby stores and scout for designer wear at secondhand shops.

• Breast-feed if you can. It’ll save you $2,000 a year, the money you’d spend on infant formula.

• If you choose or need to use infant formula, buy milk-based formula. It tends to cost less than soy-based formula, so don’t buy soy or another type of special formula unless your pediatrician recommends it. The powdered version is the least expensive. And keep in mind that all infant formula sold in the U.S. must meet the same basic nutrient requirements specified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, so if your baby likes store-brand formula, buy it—in the largest-size cans you can find.

Consumer Reports Best Baby Products (Tenth Edition) is organized in a handy A to Z format and reviews a wide range of essential baby (and parent) gear, with an emphasis quality and safety. It will help parents find the best value and give them the information they need to determine when a bigger price tag means better quality and when it doesn’t, which baby products are must-haves and which are a waste of money, and which products might even be unsafe. For more information, visit www.consumerreports.org or Sandra’s baby products site at www.babyproductsmom.com.

Want to win a copy of Consumer Reports Best Baby Products (Tenth Edition)? Just leave a comment and your name will be entered in the giveaway for this book. You can get a bonus entry by signing up for my blog either via email or RSS and leaving a comment letting me know you did. Giveaway ends July 17.

I’m happy to introduce  my guest blogger, Leah Ingram. Thank you for your great post, Leah!

This past Mother’s Day I wrote a posting on my Suddenly Frugal blog dedicated to my mother and the frugal lessons she taught me when I was growing up. But it got me thinking: what kind of frugal lessons did I hope I was passing on to my daughters? Granted, they’re only 11 and 13 right now, so I’ve still got plenty of time to teach them the importance of being smart with their money. But here are the four frugal lessons I hope they have taken to heart.

You Can Wear Clothes More Than Once. In my mind you can wear a pair of pants or a shirt until it is either visibly stained or noticeably smelly. I’d like to think that my kids feel the same, though I have plucked many a still-clean pair of jeans from the bathroom hamper and put them back in their dresser when no one was watching. Soon enough I know they’ll realize that it takes a lot of time, energy and effort to wash clothes (just wait until they’re out on their own) and so going for as long as you can in between loads of laundry is ideal.

Budgeting Is Key to Making Your Money Last. I’m so glad that my husband and I decided two years ago to begin giving our daughters their allowance monthly. This automatically forced them to figure out how to make their money last longer and made them rethink how they shopped—especially since my husband and I also decided that from here on in, the kids were responsible for buying themselves all non-essentials.

Buying New Isn’t Always the Best Option. Suddenly last year my younger daughter became label conscious. Brand names, especially on clothes, took on a new meaning, and seemingly overnight she wanted to wear the same maker clothes that all the kids at school were wearing. But she had a problem. Mommy and Daddy were no longer footing the clothing bill (see Lesson 2 above), and my daughter couldn’t afford brand-new, brand name clothing in those dimly lit stores with loud music. Thankfully, we introduced our daughters to the concept of consignment, resale and thrift store shopping, where they discovered they could indulge their desires for certain label clothing, albeit used, and not use up their entire allowance in the process.

Swapping and Borrowing Can Stretch a Dollar. In our pre-frugal life, we never balked at buying our daughters books to read. I mean, if there was one indulgence we shouldn’t feel guilty about, it would be buying books, right? Well it turned out to be wrong, especially after we reviewed our annual spending on books one year and discovered how much cash we were laying out in bookstores. So we reintroduced our daughters to the concept of the library, and suggested that if they wanted to read a book badly, they could borrow it from the library. We also explained that if they got lazy and forgot to return the book or, heaven forbid, lost the book, they would be responsible for the late fines. In addition to using the library again, my daughters got creative and began swapping books, DVDs and clothes with friends. These days they are well read and well dressed with nary a dime spent in the process.

Leah Ingram is founder of the Suddenly Frugal blog (www.suddenlyfrugal.com) and author of the soon-to-be-released book Suddenly Frugal: How to Live Happier and Healthier on Less (Adams Media, 201), a book that promises to save a family up to $25,000 in a year.