How to use Amazon Family to save money on all the products your kids need

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• Amazon Family helps parents save cash on many of the items that come standard with childcare, from diapers to baby food and childproofing gear.
• An Amazon Family membership is free if you already have Amazon Prime, and signing up for Family only takes a minute.
• When you sign up for Amazon Family, you also get access to thoughtful product lists, informational articles, and recommendations from leading parenting experts.
• If you want help choosing the best products for your family, check out our parenting and baby gear buying guides.

My wife and I have been Amazon Prime members since 2006 and parents since 2013, but it wasn't until 2018 that we started using Amazon Family.

The occasion that led us to start using the service was the birth of our second child. And in the year that we've taken advantage of the program, it has saved us plenty of money, but even more notably, it has introduced us to products and information that we might otherwise never have known about.

So what is Amazon Family?

Amazon Family is a free service as long as you already have a Prime membership (if you don't, sign up here). It offers discounts on myriad baby and childcare products, like diapers, wipes, bottles, and so forth, and membership comes with email newsletters rich with information tagged to your child's age. Expect an email with information on teething sometime around the 10th month.

Yes, Amazon uses Family to try to sell you stuff - you can definitely expect to see content promoting baby gates around the time your kid turns a year, for example - but it's stuff you were almost surely going to buy anyway, and at the best prices out there.

Amazon Family offers product ideas and information for kids aged zero through 12 years. You'll start off with curated product lists like "Jumpstart Your Nursery," a collection including rocking chairs, changing pads, cribs, and so on, and before you know it, you'll be clicking on "Gifts for 12-year-olds."

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How to set up Amazon Family

If you already have Amazon Prime, then you're just a few clicks away from setting up your Amazon Family account. Or accounts, as the case may be. You can create a profile for several children, and when you go to your Amazon Family account page, you can toggle between the kids to see product ideas and information tailored to for their age (and gender, though that's only questionably positive).

1. Click this link to go to Amazon Family.
2. Sign into your account or sign up for your free trial of Prime, which includes Amazon Family.
3. You will be taken to a page with the headline: "Tell us about your little one to start receiving exclusive discounts, parenting tips via email newsletter, and more."
4. Enter the kid's gender, birthday (or due date or anticipated adoption date - you can set up your Amazon Family account before the child even arrives), and, if you want, his or her name.
5. Then hit the button that says "Explore Amazon Family" and you can start doing just that.

You'll see an extensive "Top picks for your family" with products aplenty, you can browse among articles organized by age (they have titles ranging from "How to raise responsible kids" to "No teeth, no problem. Solid foods for little eaters") and you can sign up for subscriptions to diapers, baby food, and other items you'll need on a recurring basis, saving up to 20% in many cases.

Again, you were going to buy all this stuff and read all about babies and kids and parenting anyway, right? So why not just stick with Amazon like you do for everything else you buy, most of the shows you watch, the music, the groceries...

Sign up for Amazon Family here or sign up to try Amazon Prime here.