Today’s Hint: Combine Baby Announcements With Other Greetings

There’s an old saying that in life, all good things come in threes. In other words, major life events like having babies, moving, switching jobs and celebrating the holidays often tend to happen around the same time.

So, if you’re someone who likes to acknowledge these milestones with traditional mailings such as baby announcements, moving announcements and holiday cards, the cost of such greetings can quickly add up. The good news, however, is that there is a way to mail out such greetings for less, a money saving strategy that is today’s hint.

The tactic: combine baby announcements with other greetings. For instance, if your baby is born sometime between September and January, choose a holiday and New Year’s season card that doubles as a birth announcement. Most of the major card companies off such designs, such as these available at Minted (I love this one highlighted over at Cool Mom Picks) and these from Tiny Prints. “We see no issue whatsoever with combining a birth announcement with a holiday or a seasonal greeting. This just makes the announcement more personal and festive,” says Natasha Lawler, spokeswoman for Minted.

Or, if your family moves not long before or after your baby is born, there are creative ways you can combine baby announcements with news of your move, though you’ll probably want to keep the news about the baby first and foremost, as Ms. Lawler of Minted suggests.

How to do that? She offers these creative ideas: “leave the front of the birth announcement all about baby and then perhaps note on the address label that the address is new” or “add the verbiage about the new home to the back of the announcement — this way the front is still all about baby.” And if you already have older children, here’s another idea from Ms. Lawler to consider: “Write “something along the lines of ‘[older siblings names] would like to welcome home, which by the way is now [insert new address], their new baby sister/brother.’”

You also can find some other clever ideas for combining baby and moving announcements over at Mamapedia, and Jessica over at Fantabulosity writes about some cards available at Etsy that creatively combine new baby and new crib news.

Not only is this announcement combination approach a money-saving strategy, it’s also a time-saving one, as moms over at What to Expect and Andrea Howe at Disney Baby point out.

To be sure, if you prefer to have separate traditional mailings for each milestone, you can cut costs in other ways, say with creative strategies for saving on baby gift thank you notes or by putting your various greetings into the same envelope. (I, for instance, put baby announcements in the same envelopes as baby gift thank you notes, as many people sent gifts even before I got the announcements out).

And if your move is timed near the holidays, but your baby’s birth wasn’t, you still can combine holiday cards with moving announcements as I did back in 2012 (check out these holiday-moving combination options at Minted).

Finally, if you don’t care about sending a traditional mailing, there are other more budget-friendly milestone announcement approaches you can employ instead, such as going for online cards (and you can combine those greetings as well).

Would you combine such greetings? Why or why not? What are your money- and time-saving tactics for sending baby announcements?

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