With a bazillion ways for New York parents to spend money, we’re here to help you find what you need at prices you might find in the suburbs.
Not that rearing a child anywhere is a bargain, but with $6,000 summer camps, $500 extracurriculars and $12 taxi rides when you miss the school bus, kid expenses here are like Dante’s fifth circle of hell. But they don’t have to be–as any number of magazine articles, Internet tips, and books will attest.
Unfortunately, most of the proffered tips are as practical to the 3% of American parents who live here as butchering their own cow would be.
That’s why we’ve come up with the Le$$er Parenting blog–a (mostly) borough-centric forum on parenting for less. The idea isn’t to squeeze every dime out of every transaction–just to save where and when you easily can because you know there will be plenty of times down the road when you can’t cut corners.
Here you will find reasonable ways to feed, clothe, and entertain your family. Yes, here. In the country’s most expensive city. Don’t expect labor-intensive suggestions simply to save a few dimes–I myself forget to clip coupons, don’t reuse baggies, and am generally low energy. (I’ve even been known to pay $5 for a pound of fresh pasta when an 89-cent box would’ve done the trick, simply to hush the bellyaching kids.) For the most part, these tips require no extra effort, just some creative looking. And since you live in New York and may not have time to bargain shop, we’ll try to point you in some helpful directions.
We’ll cover subjects as diverse as birthday parties, health and beauty, education, home décor, summer plans, and healthcare. These are only a few of the places we’ve found to save money in the open wallet that is New York.
And we know open wallets. Unlike most rational adults who leave the city when they have children, my husband and I relocated from a 3-bedroom townhouse in Boston to a 1-bedroom Midtown apartment almost 10 years ago, when I was seven months pregnant.
As we hadn’t acclimated ourselves to city pricing as a couple before we expanded the family by 50%, we tried to find not-crazy (read: not-Manhattan) prices for the essentials (non-essentials, which we couldn’t afford anyway). Because most of our friends thought that the only alternative to a $115 birthday cake for a todder was one that sold for $200, we felt like the Clampetts their first week in Beverly Hills. Slowly, we discovered ways to live here for less–not cheap, but less than some (and more than others). Most of these ideas originated through insight and research from smart friends, our own pricey mistakes, and even a few solutions we ginned up ourselves. But we’re on the lookout for more. Please send us your tips so we can share them with readers. If you find yourself stumped on particular issues, send us those questions, too. We’ll do our best to address them here.
You won’t save enough money for a summer rental in the Hamptons, but you could save enough to garage your Prius—or at least pay for a couple of parking tickets.
Remember, it may take a village to rear a child. In New York, it takes a village to figure out how to finance it.
