How much should you be paying for diapers and wipes?

Almost everyone, sometime in their lifetime, will have to purchase diapers and wipes. It doesn't matter if they are name brand or store brand, it's one of those purchases that everyone always seems to dread. Diapers and wipes seem to be able to drain your wallet about as fast as formula does in the world of baby purchases.


Here is the price you want to pay

Diapers (Brand Name) $0.16 ea

Diapers (Store brand) $0.14 ea

Diapers (Pull-Ups, Jumbo) $5.99/$0.10 ea

Diaper Wipes (Generic, per wipe) $0.01 or less

Diaper Wipes (Brand Name, per wipe) $0.02 or less

Okay so yes there's the list but what does it mean? Well it's hard because when can you actually get these great deals? Not very often but when you do, that's when you need to stock up. I'm not saying buy every single pack on the shelf but if you know that your kid is going to be in size 3 for a while or will be moving up to size 4 shortly, then buy a few packs. 

Normally, store prices on diapers run about $.29 for each diaper on a daily basis. What's the way to find out how much a diaper is in the box? You take the total price of the box, let's say $8.97 and divide that by the number of diapers, say 32. $8.97/32=$.28, which is how much each diaper costs.  Now, that's not a terrible price, but it's not exactly good either. One way to get that price down is of course a coupon but another way to knock it down is to keep an eye on other store's ads. 

If you know that diapers are always $8.97 at Walmart for a jumbo pack, and then you get your Sunday paper and you see that Lewis Drug has it on sale for $7.50 for a jumbo pack AND you have a coupon for maybe a $1.50 a pack of jumbo diapers, you now are going to get that $8.97 case for just $6. Take that divided by 32 diapers and now you are only going to pay $.18 a diaper! I know that's not the exact stock up price but 18 is a heck of a lot closer to 16 than 28 was!

Another tip that some people don't realize. Bigger is NOT always better. Sometimes you can actually get a better deal when you buy a bunch of small packages of something as opposed to the "bulk" size. Yeah you are getting more in one pack but when you are paying double what you should, is it really worth it? NOPE. 

Figuring out the price for wipes is the exact same equation as the price of diapers. Take the price of the wipes divided by the number in the package and that's how much you are paying per wipe. 

Something that I do, yes I'm a little bit of a weird-o, is I will write down all the sizes of wipes, name brand and store brand, as well as the prices of each package. So like 240 Walmart brand wipes for $4.77.  That comes out to be almost $.02 per wipe. I don't necessarily think that's a bad price, especially since you are just wiping a butt and throwing them away anyway. 

Don't forget though, if you are waiting for deals on diapers and wipes, no matter what store, you can price match if they are close enough. If they carry the same size packages, like jumbo or 64 count wipes, you can match it. and if they are having a sale on store brand, you can go to walmart and price match store brand!

I hope this helps, it's one of the things I use all the time to figure out what I am paying for diapers. Just the other day I bought a huge case of diapers, 222 for just $37.99. That's only $.17 a diaper. :)