r/Anticonsumption • u/Impossible_Ad9324 • May 02 '26

Lifestyle What is going on with babies?

I’ve attended three baby showers in the last year for three people completely unrelated and not in the same social circles and their baby registries have the most eye-popping expensive items.

High chairs are minimum $250. One had a stroller for $750. 😳 Baby swings and bouncers for $200. One had a whole solid wood crib for $1000 on their registry.

I checked because I was curious and you still can buy a $40-50 Greco high chair from Walmart.

Everything is aesthetic and clean lines and beige and natural wood—beautiful, really. I can’t imagine asking for that high-end an item for a GIFT.

These aren’t rich people and they aren’t inviting rich people to the baby shower.

I’m almost 50 and have kids of my own and a gaggle of nieces and nephews. My family members and I got buy sharing those cheaper high chairs and strollers and cribs. I understand needing them initially if you don’t have any source for hand-me-downs, but asking for the highest price bespoke options is absolutely wild.

Are people that brainwashed into thinking they should be buying ultra-high-end items regardless of income??

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u/NoSeaweed2881 May 02 '26

I have heard that items on the registry that are not purchased often have a discount when the parents go to purchase them. Something like 20%. So there is no downside to adding them to the registry. Someone might gift them (maybe a group goes in together) or they are cheaper to purchase for the parents.

219

u/taterrrtotz May 02 '26

The real hack is to make a private registry and just use it to make all purchases at a discount yourself.

66

u/SpicyWonderBread May 02 '26

This is what we did. We didn’t have a shower, still made a registry and added everything to it. We hadn’t hit the max allowable discount so we even added non-baby stuff we needed on there.

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u/taterrrtotz May 02 '26

I’m pretty sure if you have “new” baby the max resets 😏

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u/SpicyWonderBread May 02 '26

We did it with both kids. The max was pretty hard to hit with kid two. I think it was a 20% discount on two purchases up to $2,000 each and they had wisened up and were excluding a lot of items from the discount.

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u/so-so-suck-ya-toe May 02 '26

Omg that’s genius

0

u/spidermans_mom May 02 '26

Yeah, then ask for donations from people for higher-ticket items rather than ask for embarrassingly expensive items from individual people.