There are certain purchases you deem are NECESSARY things to buy. For us, one of those things was a vehicle. We had to purchase a new vehicle before we got married because my previous vehicle had, how shall I say it…, “given up the ghost”. After we were married and had our first child we realized one thing we should have taken into consideration – the difficulty of getting a baby in and out of the backseat of a 2 door vehicle. But we decided to put up with it, that it wasn’t enough of a reason to purchase a new vehicle. Then as time went on the next pregnancy brought twins and we didn’t see any way to be able to get 3 car seats in our little car. Although I never wanted to be a van guy, we switched to a nice family minivan, also taking into consideration that we wanted to have more children.

So a year later we had our 4th child and 2 years later we were expecting our fifth child. We started planning seating arrangements to be able to have the baby in the bench seat behind the front passenger seat. We realized quickly, too much disappointment that we wouldn’t be able to get 3 of our children’s car seats on the back bench and also realized earlier that we had great difficulty fitting our triple stroller in the very small cargo space.

We did research on the internet to upgrade our van, trying to find one that would fit the three car seats in the back and was high ranking in its quality. We discussed it with our family and friends. After much research and almost making our final decision of which vehicle to buy, my wife came up with a much simpler solution. Why not find some narrower car seats? In the end, we ended up purchasing 2 narrower car seats, spending only $300 instead of $30,000. That was much easier on our budgets. We have been able to make what we have work for us.

What alternative purchases have you been able to find that have saved you some $$’s?