by This question comes from The Dad’s Guide to Twins community. There, you can ask your questions about having to raise twins. This question says, “We found a place that offers travel systems and strollers for rent. My question is, is it worth buying a twin stroller if renting one works out to about a quarter of the price of a new one over a year? And how long did you actually use your twin stroller?”
So this concept of renting baby gear for your twins is very interesting. As you noted, it can help stretch out your finances. If you are tight on cash and you don’t have the money right now to buy a brand new stroller or travel system, renting may be an option. However, keep in mind that over the long term, renting often is more expensive than buying. That’s how these companies that rent their products make their profit and make their money.
How Long Will You Use It?
When our twins were infants, we used an Inline Snap-N-Go stroller where the twin car seats were able to snap right into the stroller and we were able to move around very easily. However, we only used this stroller for about six months before our girls kind of outgrew their infant car seats and were kicking each other in the Inline stroller. So in that case, if we had rented that stroller that would have been great for us because we didn’t use it for that long. However, after we were done with the inline stroller, we switched over to the Jeep Wrangler side-by-side stroller and we used that with our girls for many years. In that case, it was worth buying that because we used that for a longer period of time.
So if you are limited on cash, consider going for the rental. However, if you do buy a travel system or a stroller for your twins, you can always sell that stroller later and recover most of the cost or at least a fair portion of it that you spent upfront. You can sell your stroller on Craigslist or oftentimes, multiples groups have consignment sales where you can sell your stroller to other parents of twins and multiples. Even if you don’t want to rent and you’re concerned about how much it may cost in the long term, consider buying a used stroller. You can find these on Craigslist just like you would sell your own, or like our multiples group here locally often has a huge garage sale where all the parents of multiples get together and they sell baby gear including strollers, carriers and other baby clothes at a big discount to what you’d find at the store. So if you don’t want to rent and you don’t want to pay full price for something new, always consider something used. The speed at which babies go through baby gear is incredible and you’re going to find good offers on stuff that’s slightly used and still in great condition.
This topic was originally addressed on the Dad’s Guide to Twins Podcast Episode 65: One-on-One Time, Family vs. Work, Renting Gear.
