I often hear that having a baby is a huge annual expense, and people wonder how we can afford to travel with one. Read this to find out what we did and didn't buy to budget in that first year.
A comment we get often people find out how often we travel with Kymani is how do you afford that? The simplest way to answer this question is that travelling is a priority to our family and we put it above a lot of other things in our lives. Of course, the answer is much more complicated than that. Travelling, even without a child can be an expensive hobby, and we are always looking for ways to cut on costs. I see post all the time talking about how children cost $20,000 a year and so people wonder how you can afford to travel on top of these added expenses. I'm here to break it down with the choices we personally make to prioritize traveling and having experiences as a family
Purchase Second Hand
This is the number one way you will save money when you have a baby, they go through clothes ridiculously fast especially the first year of their life. It's not just clothes though, toys and developmental activities also have a very short lifespan. If you want to prioritize travelling, you do not need to pay $30 for a brand new onesie. At our thrift stop we can get them for $3 or less. We have also lucked out with find brand new clothing at thrift stores with the original tags attached. Babies go through clothing so fast, there's always an abundance in the thrift shops. You can also consider joining parental Facebook groups or buy nothing groups and getting clothes for free that you can then pass on when you are done with.
There's some things that we refused to buy second hand, like a car seat and crib because there are safety concerns with those. However the majority of baby clothes, toys and books, even a baby bath can be bought second hand safely.
Skip the Gadgets
It's quite easy to be sucked into the consumer marketing around baby items and important to evaluate what you actually need. We did not get a baby monitor, white noise machine, night light, humidifier, rocking chair or baby bouncer. We were lucky enough to be gifted a bottle sterilizer, warmer, breast pump and storage bags as they were things we probably wouldn't have invested our money in either.
Skip Single Use Items
If something for the baby is limited to a single use, or you are very limited with what you can do with it then think hard before purchasing it. For example, do you need a 50$ baby bath or can you use the kitchen sink? Do you need a diaper pail and to buy liners constantly or can you take the garbage out more often? Do you need a baby bottle drying rack or can you use your normal dish drying rack? Only you and your partner can answer these questions, and if it's your first baby then it can be more tricky to figure out what kind of habits you're going to have. We chose to purchase less to start out with and figured we could always get it later if we realized it would make a difference.
As far as limited use items go, where I believe we saved the most money was with our car seat as we chose to go straight to a convertible car seat. That's right, our baby was never in a bucket seat. This one seems to shock people the most because society has told people it is required. Actually when we went shopping for a car seat and I said I wanted to convertible car seat for a newborn, the sales lady tried to tell me that was illegal. She was incorrect, you can put your baby in the car seat as long as they meet the size and weight requirements. We purchased a Costco Scenera Next because it's a popular traveling car seat. An infant can go in it if they are 5lbs and 19 inches. The average infant bucket seat is a couple hundred dollars, and they are marketed to get as a stroller combo to save money, which really just results in you spending hundreds on something with a short lifespan.
We also chose use his travel crib permanently at home as his crib as well. It's the most expensive baby item we bought and we are going to make the most out of it. There's no reason for him to have a fancy $500 crib at home and a $500 travel crib. Since we travelled for so long, its also the sleep space he is most familiar with. Since it's a travel crib, we have the Lotus Guava, it's lightweight and we can easily move it from one room to another if needed.
Baby Led Weaning
If you're not familiar with this term, it's just a fancy way of saying you follow your baby's lead with food, letting them decide what they eat and letting them experiment with it. There have been studies done about the long term effects of spoon feeding your baby purees and a lot of them actually conclude that it's not great. It can result in force feeding the baby, giving them confusion over their body's natural hunger and full cues. BLW is popular as it's great for the baby's development, they get to experience different textures, both playing with and eating, as well as feeding themselves. A big appeal of this movement is how much less work it can be for the parents. While there might be a little more mess to clean up, you're not buying or preparing special food just for your baby.
This point can also tie into the gadget one because you do not need to buy a special blender just for your baby to puree their food. You also don't have to buy them special plastic utensils and non-stick plates or the fanciest high chair. We used his fabric high chair at our table at home for months until we were given a free high chair from a buy nothing group. He eats better with our standard stainless steel appliances because they're honestly better designed to pick up food than the plastic baby ones are. We never specifically bought him baby food until he went to daycare. He ate off of our plates as soon as we started introducing food. He does have pouches and baby cereal bars now, but he still eats what we are eating for dinner whether it be lasagna or Indian takeout.
Your babies first year of life can be as expensive as you make it. You can buy the fanciest car seat and stroller combo, or you can buy a basic one. That being said, the first year of your babies life can be very hard and if buying that fancy stroller with all the bells and whistles is what makes it possible for you to leave the house with your baby, then that is what you do! We personally chose not to spend a lot of money on gadgets for Kymani, knowing we wanted the experience of travelling the world with him.