I was included in this week’s Yakezie Carnival, with my post on how small amounts can have a big impact on the mortgage

Callie = Joy – You won’t want to miss this photo essay, showing a couple whose first child was stillborn. I can’t even imagine their grief. But it was great to celebrate with them when their second child was born, screaming! Beautiful!

How much is $20? @ So Over Debt. It’s not much, in theory, but can be a big deal psychologically. And saying, “Oh, what does it hurt to spend $20 on this?” can lead to financial problems.

Should I prepare my own taxes? @ LifeHacker I thought this year would be the year we hired out our tax prep services. I had always done them myself in the past with Turbo Tax or the H&R Block software. The 2011 tax year is our nuttiest by far — two states, a move (and deductions for that), my business income, buying our house, sold some stock, and on and on. And yet, I *think* Turbo Tax can still cover me. One CPA quoted me at $600-800 to do our return (um, what?) and Karen told me that was nuts and encouraged me to shop around. The next firm put me in the $250-300 range. I’ll save even more if I do it myself, but only if we can catch all of our deductions. We’ll see.

How to save money on clothing@ Saving Advice Good stuff! I’m finding that I prefer to buy shoes and scarves right now — things that fit me at any size.

11 things you may not know about retirement accounts @ Get Rich Slowly #5 was new to me! I’m going to see if we can do this.

Home workout programs can be a cost effective way to work out @Bible Money Matters. Going to a gym just isn’t going to work out for me right now, unless I can figure out how to get up early. I’ll stick with home stuff for now.

What I would feed my family on $250/month and  How I would improve my budget even more @Keeper of the Home. Wish I could have written these posts! I’m still a ways off from figuring out how to cook whole foods on a budget. I can do “budget” cooking or “whole food” cooking, but combining the two? Still working on that.

I created some construction paper caterpillars and wrote their names on it.

We had The Very Hungry Caterpillar board book, but I also borrowed another, larger version from the public library. And yes we had story-time while people were eating dinner and I read it to them. I wanted to explain why I had a platter of pickles, salami, swiss cheese….and a fruit salad of apples, pears, plums, strawberries, oranges…you know the drill.

We put up some balloons shaped like caterpillars and called it a day.

Between their birthdays and then Christmas a few days later, we had a toy avalanche over here.

Related: See the before shots of these rooms and how they looked in September, shortly after we moved in

I wanted to show you our playroom now. Our playroom is intended to be a dining room in this house, but we don’t care. We dine in the eat-in kitchen. We love the placement of their playroom because it’s right off the kitchen and office.

I determined some other things I wanted to add to this room and put them on their Christmas wish list. Some doting grandparents helped finish the playroom. That’s a cheaper way to do it (for the parents) — tell the grandparents what you want and if they get those things, cool! If not, no harm.

The floor puzzle mat is great because it provides a cushy surface that they can play with and take apart, but also it keeps the floor a bit warmer. This version is thicker than others I’ve seen.

I wasn’t sure if the kids would play with the town landscape floor rug or if it would just be a rug, but they play with it quite a bit and push cars around to the little stores and houses.

I bought the play kitchen from a mom in my local mom’s group.

The car/train table is particularly cool because it has hills and roads to push trains and matchbox cars around, but it also comes with a heavy-duty lid. Pop that thing on and you have a surface for coloring, stacking blocks, whatever. (pictured both ways)

The 3×3 organizer came from Target and we bought it before Johnny was born. We have it anchored to the wall in case someone ever tries to climb it. My kids aren’t climbers, but we like to have playdates and I want others to be safe here, too.

The 3-drawer blue plastic organizer holds the wooden train pieces, wooden alphabet blocks, and small toys.

We keep their board books and small toys in the cubbies. The drawers hold cars, plastic animals, balls, etc. We have a brown cube on the floor behind the train table that holds stuffed animals.

I had a plastic tote, but the lid went missing. The tote then became perfect for holding their large cardboard blocks.

They have a few toys in their bedrooms, but we keep most of the toys downstairs since that’s where we are most of the day.

Our office is in the adjacent room and there is a set of French doors that we sometimes close.

The desk came from craigslist for $50. The computer was a refurbished model from eBay (just the tower…the monitor came from Walmart). Messy desk, I know. That’s me.

The curtains came with the house (we included that in our offer), but these were originally hung in the family room. I switched them with plain brown ones because I thought it matched our rooms better. The windows were the same size, so it worked out.

The end table you see came from craigslist. We have two of them, actually, and the other is in the family room. Below is our printer which is wirelessly connected. The cherry wood chair was my great-grandmother’s.

Our awesome glider and ottoman was a Christmas present from Shane’s parents. See — put stuff on your Christmas list and let generous family decorate your house :).

All we need now is a small area rug to anchor the room, and I think we’ll be done in there. This stuff is fun!

Disclosure: I linked to some items mentioned here and used my Amazon affiliate link.

Hello, I’m the Clumsy Coquette. I’m a 20-something aspiring author that just finished graduate school and is trying to take the world by storm. I have a live-in boyfriend and we have two furbabies: Penelope our cat and Daisy our dog. I blog about a variety of topics, including : frugal living tips, recipes, life stories, beauty tips, giveaways, and product reviews.

 (photo Chug)

It wasn’t long ago that I started cutting back my spending so I could enjoy other things in life and pay off some debt. Since the recession started I personally have been faced with a lot of financial decisions and budget limitations. My job has conducted a few rounds of layoffs, I haven’t been given a raise in years, and the prices of basically everything have gone up consistently. Not only did I cut my grocery budget significantly by couponing, I also started using other products in different ways.

Around my house, you will always find a lot of lemons. That’s because lemons are pretty inexpensive and they have a ton of uses. I use lemons a lot more than probably the average person. Not only do lemons have health benefits, they are a great addition to your frugal lifestyle. Here are 12 ways you can incorporate lemons into every day use:

1. Cleaning Copper.
One way to clean copper-bottomed pots is to squeeze lemon juice into a container and mix with salt. All you have to do is use a cloth to scrub the pot until the tarnish comes off. Or you can just cut a lemon in half, apply salt and scrub that way.

2. Vinegar Deodorizer.
Do you clean with vinegar? Hate the smell? Squeeze some lemon juice into your cleaner and not only will it help enhance the cleaning, it will also dilute the smell of vinegar.

3. Garbage Disposal Clean-Up.
If you have some funky odors coming from the garbage disposal used the shell or a juiced lemon or just the lemon rinds in your disposal. It won’t hurt the disposal, and it will help clear up the odor.

4. Soil enhancer.
If you are a gardener or have plants in the house, adding a lemon shell or rind to the soil is a great way to improve the quality. If your soil needs more acid, this is a cheap and easy way to get it.

5. Bleaching.
Did you know that lemon is a natural bleaching agent? If you put some lemon juice on the stains of your white linens and allow them to sun dry, the stain will disappear.

6. Cutting Board Clear-up
Is your cutting board stained or not completely clean? Cut a lemon in half and use it to clean a plastic or wood cutting board. Do you have dried-on food or red berry stains? Add coarse salt beforehand and then use lemon on it.

7. Natural Highlights.
If you are a fan of the sun and those summer blonde highlights, use lemon juice in your shampoo to help enhance those natural highlights.

8. Soften Brown Sugar.
Does your brown sugar get hard between baking escapades? If so, you can add a little lemon peel to the container and it will soften the brown sugar up.

9. Ant Problem?
A lot of insects are repelled by D-Limonen which is found naturally found in lemons. Use lemon juice on window and door thresholds. Don’t forget those holes and cracks too. If you can, leave peels in the thresholds.

10. Remove Faucet Limescale.
If your faucets are covered in limescale, take a lemon and rub it on the faucet. You can also use the inside of the lemon to hard water remove stains and soap residue. This can be used on porcelain too.

11. Soothe Sore Throats.
Mix lemon juice, honey, and warm tea together and drink before bed. You can also use honey, lemon juice and whiskey to soothe your throat.

12. Soften Dry Elbows.
Cut lemon in half and sprinkle with baking soda. Rub lemon on elbows for several minutes. Rinse, dry, and add lotion.

It’s been about two months since I purchased a MagicJack Plus device for our home telephone usage. I’m happy to say that it’s going well!

Just a reminder — you use a regular telephone with the Magic Jack. You don’t need to buy a special phone to use it. I chose a cordless phone that cost about $15.

I use the Magic Jack Plus when calling my parents and my grandma, mostly. My parents don’t have AT&T cell phones so it uses my cell minutes to call them. My grandma prefers her landline. She doesn’t have long distance service on it, and my cell has a long-distance area code. My Magic Jack phone number has a 317 area code, which is local to Indianapolis.

I chose my area code and the first 3 digits of my phone number.

I use the Magic Jack phone when making local calls to businesses and any place that doesn’t have a toll-free phone number.

The call quality isn’t perfect. If you want crystal-clear phone conversations, you probably won’t get them with this device. I think the sound quality compares to a decent cell phone connection, though. I’ve never had a call drop, become garbled, or otherwise un-talkable.

Perhaps if I had a high-tech phone or a faster internet connection, I’d hear even better results.

People on the other line hear me just fine, and I can hear them plainly, too. I’m happy with it enough that I want to keep it, but I just want to caution you of what you could expect.

I paid $69 + tax for the device and 12 months of service (unlimited free calls, voicemail and other perks). Next year, I’ll pay $30 for 12 months of service. Cheap!

By using the device for most of our calls while at home, we’re able to have the smallest available family plan for our cell phones.

We still haven’t decided if it’s best for us to keep our contract plan, or if we’d be better off to switch to a prepaid cell.

The voicemail service is entertaining. If someone calls and I don’t pick up, they hear “The Magic Jack customer you are trying to reach is unavailable,” or something like that, and then they can leave a message.

Immediately, I get an email which tells me the phone number the call came from, and has an audio file I can download and listen to. Or, I could call my phone number and press # to hear the message.

I don’t get a notification for missed calls, though.

I wouldn’t recommend this as your only phone line, since it will not work if you have a power failure or even if your internet conks out. It’s best to have a cell phone as well.

Note that not everyone has favorable reviews of the Magic Jack Plus. There are plenty of 1-star reviews on Amazon, and elsewhere throughout the internet. There are complaints about customer service and porting your phone number. I didn’t port my phone number; I created a new one. And I haven’t had to contact customer service, so I can’t comment on that.

Read up on the reviews, good and bad. If you buy one, be sure to get the Magic Jack Plus instead of the plain Magic Jack. The plain version requires you to keep your computer on to be in use.

There’s a 30-day trial if you purchase from the Magic Jack site.

Do you have a VoIP phone service? How do you like it?

Related: 7 cheap alternatives to a landline phone

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links for Amazon. I paid for my Magic Jack Plus myself, and have no business partnership with that company.

P.S. — I am working on the retirement series and I want to make sure I have it mostly written/outlined before I start, so that it will have a clear direction. I’m going to do a blog series and also post the links on a separate page for easy reference later. Hope to launch the week of Jan 30 but don’t hold me to it yet. Thank you!

Johnny enjoying the snow

 Some great articles across the interwebs this week. I’m only linking to a few, so not to overwhelm. I’ve been sharing plenty of good reads on Twitter, too. Are you on there?

In this week’s money fail — I set up an auto withdrawal from our checking accounts to my IRA. I promptly forgot I did this. Then, on payday, I manually sent money to the IRA. The good news is my old self will thank me for the extra bit of money in the IRA. The bad news is we have a lot less cash to float us through until next payday. Doh!

We are still waiting for all the kinks to be worked out in our new cash flow system. It’ll be great to have everything automated, so long as I remember not to manually transfer money without really meaning to.

• What to do with saved cash when you cut expenses? @Tips&Treasures. It is so key to put saved money toward your next goal. Mary cut her cable bill, and is putting that savings toward her car loan. YES!
• Consumer is king, believe it or not. Now act like one! @ One Cent At a Time
• Mobile Wallet: Path to financial ruin? @Bible Money Matters. I don’t have a smartphone, but wow. Not having to carry even a wallet sounds interesting. I wonder what they do to keep these secure.
• Live a little. Have a latte! @My Broken Coin
• 10 things you to do save money that end up costing you more @Life Hacker
• Simplify your menu @Living Well on Less
• What NOT to do: Fail to save @ The Debt Princess

Our favorite vacation by far was our honeymoon cruise to Alaska. I just had a point-and-shoot camera at the time, but I was able to take some great photos. It’s easy to take stunning pictures in a beautiful place like that.

I’m a fan of landscapes and photos as wall art, so I decided to order some prints of my favorite scenes. I selected 5×7 prints and got them for about $0.60 each. Then, I went to the dollar store and chose matching frames.

I didn’t trust my eye to choose mismatching frames to create an eclectic look, so I figured some identical frames would work best.

It’s less than $10 for a little photo collage that adds some interest to our half bath.

I do have a fifth frame, but I haven’t chosen a photo for that yet. Working on that.

On the wall behind the commode, I have a 11×14 photo. I originally purchased a $1 frame for it, but it looked terrible. The photo was rumpled-looking in it, and it had no matting. So, I picked up this frame with mat from Target for $15. I could have probably found something at a thrift store for less, but I’m impatient these days.

Just goes to show that sometimes it’s ok to be really cheap in home decor, and sometimes it just looks…cheap.

I could keep up the search at thrift stores (which I haven’t gone to in awhile — I don’t have much available time for that) or pay a little more and call it good.

Related: 12 ideas for frugal artwork @simplemom

At the end of 2011, I was really in a rut here with the blog. I didn’t know where to take it next, or how to fit blogging in with my life. After some regrouping and reflection, I identified some things I could do to enhance your experience here, and my own enjoyment as well.

First up — I’m a new Yakezie Challenger. Yakezie is a personal finance blogger network. Members are dedicated to helping one another with various blogging issues and overall it’s a big support system. The catch? You have to be serious about your membership. They won’t take just anyone!

I’m in a six-month challenge period. I have until then to get my Alexa ranking to below 200k (the lower the better). Today, I’m at 445k. That means that there are 445k other sites on the internet that rank better than mine. Here’s some ways I can try to improve my Alexa ranking. A few weeks ago, I didn’t know what or who Alexa was. Apparently she’s the popularity judge, and we should try to get on her good side.

By networking with other Yakezie challengers and members and making several blog improvements, I hope to earn a membership spot. Even if I fall short, I know my blog will still be better for it.

New pages here:

• I recently created a page called Babies & Your Budget where I have many of my baby-related posts and saving ideas.
• A “my money situation” page, detailing our current budget and sharing highlights of our money story.
• A series page to keep track of past series. It’s located under the archives tab at the top. Right now, I have Courtney’s story and Dorothy’s (we need updates from them both soon, don’t we?), wedding stuff, and house stuff.

Other things I’m doing:

• Participating with SITS Girls and bloggers, working our way through ProBlogger’s 31 Days to a Better Blog ebook. We’re implementing ideas from that book and networking with one another.
• Doing a DIY blog critique via MomComm’s workbook. Psst: Enter code JANPROMO to grab it for $10.50. Sale ends Jan. 20!
• Keeping a running list of blog post ideas, so that I can focus writing on my strongest ideas and make the best use of my time. The list is on regular paper so I don’t get sucked into my computer to write one little thing, and find that I’m still on it 5 minutes later. Or worse.
• Mapping out a tentative post schedule
• Making a priority list of blog tasks. Lower priority stuff shouldn’t clutter up my attention when higher priority stuff needs done first. So obvious, but I needed to tell myself that.
• Searching for opportunities to guest post, and finding quality guest posts for my site (wanna post here? Get in touch!)
• Adding Twitter & Facebook buttons to posts, and to my sidebar
• Cleaning up my sidebars
• Improving site loading speed
• Making the font in the comments section larger. Why did no one ever tell me it was too small!? I feel so silly.

You get the point. I’m trying to make this site a better place to read and interact. Feedback always welcome!

[Disclosure: Post contains affiliate links]

Ever wonder the impact an extra $10, $50, $100, or $500 could have, when paid to the principal on a loan?

You can see by using an amortization calculator or spreadsheet (link goes to the excel sheet I used above. It’s sweet).

We are extremely early in our 30-year mortgage, having completed only three payments. Loans such as mortgages or car loans are structured so that you pay only a little bit of principal and a lot of interest in your earliest payments, and it gradually adjusts so that by the end of the term you are paying a lot toward principal and not as much to interest. As you can see by my screenshot, our first payment sent $495 to interest and only $173 to principal.

The more we can put toward the principal early in the amortization period, the more money we’ll save off the life of the loan.

We can take a concept from 20sMoney and determine our mortgage balance’s tipping point – that is, the point where we are paying more toward principal each month than interest (without extra payments). For us, with no more extra payments that point will come at month 176, or when we have paid down about 33% of our starting balance.

We could be more substantial with our extra payments until we reach that tipping point, and then shift our extra payments to retirement investments, since more principal would be going to interest at that time.

Our starting mortgage balance was $132,000 at 4.5% over a 30-year term.

Say I paid my mortgage balance every month, and then at the end of the first year, I applied one extra $100 payment toward the principal. The calculator shows that $100 at month 12 would save $265 in interest. Now, say I didn’t make any extra payments until year 4. I put $100 toward principal on month 48, saving only $219 in interest.

Say I don’t make extra payments until year 10. Put in $100 extra, save $143 in interest.

We paid our regular balance for our first payment. For the second two, I rounded up the total amount of the check to an even $850 (this amount is including taxes and insurance).

So far, those two tiny extra payments of $3.51 each have saved $17.84 in interest.

Let’s look at what an extra $3.51/month will do if I paid that tiny extra amount for the life of the loan. I’d save $1,375.59 and pay off the balance three months ahead of schedule. That $3.51/month doesn’t seem so inconsequential now, does it?

An extra $10/month toward principal saves me $3,789 and pays it off 10 months ahead of time.

An extra $20/month would save $7,283 and pay it off 20 months faster.

An extra $50/month saves $16,390 and we’d pay it off almost 4 years early.

An extra $100/month saves $28,194 and pays it off 82 months early.

We haven’t decided how much extra we want to start regularly overpaying.

We DO want to make sure we’re funding our retirement accounts really well from here on out (we’re back at 15% gross going to retirement, plus company match), because just like the power of compounding interest works to reduce a loan balance, it also works to increase our investments. We aren’t maxing out both of our IRAs or Shane’s 401(k), so you could make the argument that we’d better get to that point first, and then take care of the mortgage.

Some people argue that when your mortgage interest rate is low, you’d be better to invest that money in our retirement accounts instead of prepaying the mortgage.

Yes, it’s possible that if we put an extra $100 in our IRA per month instead of toward our mortgage, our portfolio could increase at a higher rate than the interest savings. Or, it couldn’t. Hard to predict. My mortgage balance is a predictable amount because it is a fixed rate. And inflation? Yeah I can’t predict what will happen there.

Here’s the thing: I’m not such an all-star with our budget that I can guarantee we are awesome with every dollar, every month. FAR from it. I can’t say that I wouldn’t fritter away $20 or $50 or even more in a given month, if given the opportunity. I guarantee we fritter away more than $3.51/month.

While I am trying to automate our budget, we are people, not robot spenders.

We want to fund our investments as best as we can right now, but I still think there’s room for paying extra on our mortgage. We can have it both ways.

The amount can be small enough that we won’t notice it’s gone, but big enough to have an impact.

Related:

• Rethinking the early mortgage payoff @wisebread
• Is it better to invest or prepay a mortgage? @getrichslowly (Post contains a link to a guy who thinks you should never pay extra on your mortgage. The post shares a breakdown of opinions from many experts, and has a great discussion in the comments)

How about you? Are you paying extra on the mortgage? If so, are you putting a fixed extra amount, or throwing as much as you can at it? What are your thoughts on this?

Can you believe the weather earlier this week? We  enjoyed the sunshine and balmy temps. Now it’s snowing, and that’s ok. It’s January, after all. There’s Vivie in the yard, doing her classic tongue roll. The girl is 12m and still has no teeth. She’s always rolling her tongue like that. Silly!

I wanted to draw attention to my updated disclosure policy for this site. This page outlines how I earn income. I think it’s important that you know this info on this blog, and others. Plus, the FTC says so! In the future, rather than just say a post contains affiliate links as I have been doing, I’ll link to that page AND tell you there are affiliate links. Gotta be clear.

Next, please vote in my poll on how I should present retirement info to you. The poll wasn’t working yesterday morning but it’s fixed now (though do let me know if there are problems). Voting should take 10 seconds or less, and it’ll help me make sure I’m spending my time wisely in preparing this info. I’d hate to spend hours and hours creating an ebook, to have no one care to read it. Or do a big ol’ blog series, only to make you all unsubscribe.

• Congratulations to my friend Laura and her family, who welcomed their second son, Cason Reed, to their family on Jan. 6.
• Really excited for Crystal Paine and her new book, The Money Saving Mom’s Budget. It’s amazing to hear of how the book’s proceeds are doing so much good in the Dominican Republic. Amazing!
• Menu Plan Monday: Strategies to Start. Simple, effective way to start meal planning.
• What in the world, Suze Orman? PT Money talks about why Suze Orman’s new, prepaid debit card is a lousy idea. The drama continued throughout Twitter, and then she appologized. Crazy PR move. I’m not really a Suze fan, and I’m even less of a fan now.
• Here’s a series I need: Managing Life as a Work-at-Home Moom: How to Juggle it all pt. 1
• Along those lines, I recently read Rachel Meeks’ ebook, Simple Blogging.*  It has ideas and info in there that I’m applying to my own blogging, helping me to nail down my blogging priorities and accomplish tasks faster. (Affiliate link. See my disclosure policy above.)

Way back, Amazon rolled out their Amazon Mom program for caregivers. You didn’t have to be a mom to join. Membership started out  free, and if you made qualifying purchases your membership could be extended. The incentive to join? Bigger subscribe & save discounts on things like diapers and other reguarly-purchased baby items. Plus, you could get free two-day shipping on a lot of items. It was a cool deal.

Is Amazon Mom Prime a deal anymore? Here’s the email I just got:

The Amazon Mom program is changing in 2012 and we want to make sure you know about it. Some of these changes affect your membership. Here’s how:

• Starting on January 24, 2012, the maximum discount available on diapers and wipes subscriptions will be 20%. This includes a 5% Subscribe & Save discount plus an additional 15% exclusively for Amazon Mom members who are earning free shipping benefits or have an active Amazon Prime membership.
• Customers who join Amazon Mom in 2012 will get three months of FREE Two-Day Shipping benefits. Once the initial free period is over, customers can join Amazon Prime to continue to receive full access to Amazon Mom and Amazon Prime benefits.

Since your free shipping benefits have ended and you have not yet joined Amazon Prime, the additional 15% Amazon Mom discount on diapers and wipes subscriptions will expire on January 24, 2012.

We hope that you have enjoyed the value and convenience of your Amazon Mom membership over the past year. To continue receiving all the benefits of Amazon Mom, join Amazon Prime for $79/year. As a Prime member you’ll receive:

• 20% off diapers and wipes subscriptions with Amazon Mom and Subscribe & Save.
• FREE Two-Day Shipping on millions of items.
• Unlimited instant streaming of thousands of videos with a wide range of content for the whole family, including Sesame Street and Phineas and Ferb.
• A Kindle book to borrow for free each month from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.
• Membership sharing benefits: invite up to four household members to share your shipping benefits for free.

To learn more or make changes to your Amazon Mom membership, please visit www.amazon.com/mom-faq.

To see details on your current subscriptions, please visit www.amazon.com/manageyoursubscriptions.

– end –

I’d have to pay $79/12 months to continue getting 20% off my disposable diaper purchases. I used to get 30% off and my most recent purchase was still grandfathered in, but now my best discount is 20% off IF I sign up and pay for Prime.

The Luv’s diapers* I buy for the kids (both are in a size 5 right now) cost $37.99 for a box of 168 at today’s Amazon price. That’s .23 each. With the 20% subscribe & save discount, the price becomes $30.39, or $0.18 each.

The price difference for me is $7.60 per box if I keep Prime going.

If I don’t keep Prime, but keep subscribe & save, I’d save 5%, or $1.89 per box.

I looked over my past order history. Looks like I buy a box aproximately once per month, sometimes one box per two months.

At 1 box/month, I would save money off Amazon’s regular price by joining Prime. Barely.

Purchasing 12 boxes WITH Prime is a savings of $91.20. Subtract out $79 Prime fees and that’s $12.20 saved. Whoop-de-do.

See, Amazon’s purpose in Prime is to get us to spend more of our money (duh). If we know we’ll get free 2-day shipping from their site on a lot of things, we’d probably buy more from Amazon than other companies.

Same goes for our diapers purchases. If we know we already paid $79/year to save some money, we won’t buy diapers anywhere else. Even if the price for buying elsewhere is a little lower, we wouldn’t want to waste our discount, now would we?

Prime does include some other new benefits, such as streaming TV shows and movies, and a free book rental per month if you have a Kindle.

This service could replace your cable bill or Netflix, depending on if it has titles you’d use. I do have a Kindle, and the free book rental might be an extra nice perk for me. Except, I already have tons of free Kindle books waiting for me to read, and my public library offers lots of titles to borrow.

It has been a LONG time since I’ve purchased diapers at a regular store. I’ll need to check on how their price per diaper compares with the .18 each I could be paying with Amazon.

I need to get my son potty trained already. The dude is 3. It is TIME.  I ought to try my daughter in cloth diapers again. We took a big break because of rashes and life craziness. Might be a good time to give them a shot.

Side note — if you’re looking for a source of cloth diapers, check out my friend Joanna’s cloth diaper business, Toasty Baby. It’s based in Indianapolis, but if you aren’t local you can still order online. Yay, Joanna!

What do you think? Is paying for Amazon Prime worth it to you? Do you use the side benefits (streaming TV, Kindle rentals, fast shipping)?

*Affiliate link, see my disclosure policy

Edit: When my husband enrolls in school this summer, we should be able to get a Prime discount. That might be worth getting, then.