Kids Toys and Saving Money on Batteries

If you have young kids then you will know that almost all of their favourite toys require batteries and batteries aren't cheap when you start to go through them every couple of weeks. We recently had a heap of batteries kick the bucket at our house and my wife and I have decided that replacing them with rechargeable batteries is probably going to be the best way for us to save money in the long term. Growing up my Dad was big into electronics and he made his own battery recharging device. This was not only a great way for my parents to save money, but it also meant that as kids we always had batteries available to us should we ever need any. Sometimes we needed to charge them, but that never took too long and you didn't have to bug your parents to go buy more. Today I went shopping for batteries and found that your stock standard non-rechargeable AAA batteries cost around $10-$15 for 4 batteries, with the exact same type of rechargeable batteries only costing another $5 more, and if you needed a charger another $15 more. This means that you are "in the money" after only your first or second recharge. Needless to say, I bought more rechargeable batteries, as we already had a charger at home, and the existing rechargeable batteries that we own have lasted for ages with many recharges. The other major reason that I like rechargeable batteries over the standard types, is that I hate having to dispose of batteries as you can't just throw them into the normal waste due to how bad they are for the environment. This way I don't have to worry about that and when the battery is flat, I can just charge it back up again and we are right to go.  

Question?

Do you use rechargeable batteries? Do you think it saves you money?  

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