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Kids Ain't Cheap

But They Sure Are Worth It

7 Unexpected Expenses as Your Kids Get Older

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Unexpected Expenses as Your Kids Get Older

My friend recently had a baby, and she has so much fun dressing him in cute clothing that she buys from Etsy. He has a better wardrobe than most adults! I understand her excitement in decking her baby out in adorable clothing (I did the same thing when I had my first child). However, I know her budget is tight, so I want to tell her, “Save some of that money for unexpected expenses as your kids get older,” but, of course, I don’t say that. Yet, parenthood has taught me that life will always throw you and your kids curve balls, which are often expensive!

Here are some unexpected expenses to plan for as your kids get older:

Larger Vehicle

You may think your current vehicle will suffice, especially if you only have one or two children. However, you may be surprised how quickly your family outgrows the car. We had a Toyota Echo when our first child was born, which I thought would be fine. However, we traveled frequently, and all the gear we had to bring for the baby didn’t fit in an Echo. So, in less than four months, we moved up to a minivan, which we still have 18 years later!

Don’t forget that your kids will likely want to bring friends to different activities, which is another reason you might need a bigger car.

Increased Grocery Bill

Everyone knows the grocery bill will increase when you have kids, but no one is prepared for the tween and teen years. Kids that age are growing rapidly, and they need a lot of food! When my son turned 11, I was shocked at how much he started to eat!

Private School or Homeschool

Public school is a good option for most kids, but some need a different environment, so their parents send them to private school. Or, parents like us might decide that homeschooling is a better option. Unfortunately, you may have planned for your kids to graduate from public school, so you’re unprepared to pay for private school or homeschooling when public school doesn’t work out.

Therapy for a Disability

Unexpected Expenses as Your Kids Get Older

No parent thinks their child will have a disability. I didn’t, yet, I have three kids, and each one has two diagnoses—two with autism, two with dyslexia, two with ADHD. These disabilities have cost us thousands of dollars in therapy that insurance would not cover. Thankfully, the therapy helped and the kids are doing great, but we did not anticipate having to pay for therapy, let alone having to spend so much.

Psychologist

Likewise, many kids, especially during COVID, needed a psychologist’s assistance. While most insurance plans cover psychologist appointments, you will likely have to pay a co-pay. Even if your co-pay is only $20 a session, you’re paying $1,080 over a year if your child goes once a week.

Electronics

Thirty years ago, parents didn’t have to pay a lot for electronics unless it was for a Nintendo or Atari game. Now, kids need laptops for their schoolwork, especially since some of the work (or all of it) may be online. In addition, most teens and tweens have cell phones that you’ll need to pay for.

I bought my youngest two simple Gabb phones, but they still run $50 monthly for two lines. Electronics expenses add up quickly!

High School Fund

A wise parent will start a high school fund when their children are young. Many activities in high school are pricey. Consider saving for

  • Class trips,
  • Homecoming,
  • Prom,
  • Senior pictures,
  • College application fees,
  • ACT or SAT prep and test fees

Final Thoughts

If you have a baby or a toddler, pour yourself into them, but remember, there are many unexpected expenses as your kids get older that you’ll want to save for now. Even though it’s cute to dress babies in adorable clothes, make sure you’re also saving for the future.

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Meal Planning For A Family On A Budget

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Meal Planning For A Family On A Budget
Meal planning is the holy grail of the kitchen. The most organized of moms have weekly meal plans prepped somewhere between chaperoning their kids to a myriad of extracurricular activities. You can’t help but wonder how they do it? How do they meal plan for a family on a budget.

But every time you try to pull a meal plan together, it seems more expensive than when you wing it. You’re on a budget, so you need to stick to a reasonable cost per meal, and you’d like some leftovers for lunches. You know there has to be a better way.

Five Tips to Help You Meal Plan For A Family On A Budget

1. Start By Cleaning Out Your Fridge

Before you start your meal plan for the week, open up your fridge, freezer, and pantry. Notice what leftovers you have and plan a meal based on those items. You’ll probably find you have all or most of the ingredients you need for an entire meal. 

This process kills three birds with one stone. One, it allows you to clean out your fridge. Two, you’re less wasteful of the food you’ve purchased. And three, you can save on your weekly grocery shopping. It’s a win-win-win.

2. Rotating Menu of Quick Meals

Make a list of 4 or 5 meals that your family likes and that can be made super quick. For example, every member of my family will eat pizza, anytime, anywhere. As such, there are always 4 or 5 frozen pizzas in our freezer. Other quick and easy dinners include spaghetti and meatballs, grilled cheese and tomato soup, chicken alfredo, and cheeseburger casserole.

Once you have your list complete, always make sure you have the ingredients for these meals on hand. The best practice is to buy them in bulk when they go on sale. Rotate one or two of these meals into your meal plan for the week for an easy, budget-friendly option you know your family will eat.

3. Change Your Life Chicken

The first time I read about Change Your Life Chicken from Kendra Scott of The Lazy Genius – I didn’t think I’d like it. But it seemed so simple that I decided I’d give it a shot. And guess what? I not only liked it, but I loved it.  It’s now a staple on the rotating meal plan in my house.

It’s inexpensive because it uses chicken thighs, it’s easy to make, super simple to clean up, and uses up any leftover vegetables in the fridge. Another good thing about it is the ability to change it up based on what your family likes, or to add variety from what you had last week.

Check out the recipe here and incorporate a version of Change Your Life Chicken into your meal plan once a week. It’ll change your life!

4. Breakfast for Dinner

Who doesn’t love pancakes and bacon for dinner? Breakfast for dinner is a great budget-friendly meal to incorporate into your meal plan once a week. It’s also a good meal for your kids to help out with. They can mix the pancake batter, or whisk the eggs for omelets.

I typically make breakfast for dinner on Sunday nights. We always nap after church so don’t like to eat a heavy meal in the evening.  Breakfast for dinner is is a fun, light meal to whip up together as a family and close out the weekend with.

5. Purchase Budget Meal Plans

If you’re not a creative cook and struggle to pull meal ideas together, consider buying one. Meal plans for sale are are crafted with intention. They pull together similar ingredients so are often budget-friendly and the cost is typically minimal because they’re prepared by seasoned experts.

Some of my favorite meal plans are $5 dinners, MyFreezEasy, and Momables. If you’re interested in taking an online course, I highly recommend Erin Chase’s Grocery Budget Makeover.  I personally took this class and was able to immediately apply some of the concepts to my budget. (contains affiliate links)

Do you have any tips for planning your meals on a budget? Share them in the comments below.

Read More:

The Importance of Family Dinner and How to Bring Back This Tradition

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Why Your Family Budget Should Go Beyond the Month

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Your family budget should be made beyond a one month time span. Forecasting six months worth of expenses can be a much smarter move. Here's how to do it.Most people I know budget monthly. I don’t do this. I like to have a forecasted budget at least six months in advance. With a family to care for, I feel it is especially important to budget beyond the standard one month window.

Forecasting a Family Budget

Kids have various needs. For example, I already know at the end of the summer we will be enrolling our daughter into dance class, if I waited until July to figure these how we’ll pay for this we might not be able to do it, I wouldn’t know until the time came. With a forecasted budget, I can input the classes into the budget and start making arrangements, months in advance.

You don’t have to have a set income to budget beyond a month. Both mine and my husband’s income varies each month but that doesn’t matter because regardless of how we budget we always budget worst case in terms of income and opt to use any overage for savings goals or debt repayment.

For us our daycare costs are also variable. We only pay for the days that she is actually there rather than a flat monthly rate. I know this is more unusual than most, but given the variability I need to be able to see how the difference in days affects us month to month. When our babysitter takes two weeks off in the summer, I need to figure out how to best allocate those funds. Our daycare costs can vary as much as $300 a month and I like to know before the month actually happens how the monies will be dispersed.

While some people may choose to budget these variable expenses differently, maybe but putting a set amount into an account each month for said random events, I prefer to budget the exact amount within our given monthly funds.

I also like that if I budget one amount but it ends up being more or less how that affects the line, months in advance. While spending $50 extra here and there might even out for the month, six months of doing so may leave you a few hundred short. With this in mind I can either decide to keep expenses the same or it gives me time to make more money.

When I input our family trip into our budget, along with other savings targets we set, I could see we were short a little but not until August. This gives me six months of budgeting to make up this difference and balance it. It also gives me time to look more closely at our current budget, maybe I should cut down the budgeted amount for Mother’s day and Father’s day to make up the difference or maybe I should pick up a few more shifts at work.

Financial security is so important when you have a family to care for and having a family to care for usually means your budget has the potential to be more erratic and you’ll need some flexibility. Budgeting in the future gives you much more flexibility than month-to-month.

How do you budget for your family?

 

Creating a 2014 Family Budget

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family budgetI’m a big advocate for having children participate in the family finances. Unfortunately children don’t get enough personal finance taught in school so it will be our responsibility as parents to prepare them the best we can.

I grew up in a very frugal house. My mom wasted nothing and was always on the hunt for a good deal but this doesn’t mean I had any true understanding of money. Sure I knew how to grocery shop on a dime and could sniff out a sale miles away but she never taught us how to budget, even though I knew she was doing it regularly.

Money itself was never really talked about. We had basic cable because she wasn’t willing to buy the full cable package we so badly wanted (this was pre-28464 channel options for cable) because it was simply too expensive and a waste of money. I wanted to know what ”too expensive” was and why it was a waste of money when her kids wanted, and would use, it. Because I didn’t totally understand, in my nine-year-old mind, I just though my mom was being a big meenie.

I plan on involving our children in the family’s budget. I want them to see where our money goes towards running a household and why we may not be able to afford something or what we may need to change in order to make room for a new category. If kids decide they want a cell phone and mom and dad aren’t willing to pay more than X amount of dollars per month (ie they will not be having a $75 smartphone plan under moms dime), I want them to understand why we simply can’t do it. If we decided to cancel cable as a family decision we, as a family would also decide how and where to reallocate the money. If the kids want to partake in extracurricular activities, they need to know how these decisions affect the family.

Obviously mom and dad get the final word (since it’s our money!) but I think its important to allow children young and old to have a say and gain and understanding of how the family is run.

With older children, as soon as they get a job of any kind, it will be important to sit down with them and map out how they will use their money, before the manage to go to a mall and blow it all at the food court. Decide together how much will be saved, what it will be saved for (maybe long-term for post secondary, maybe saving for something like a laptop) and teach the value of a dollar. I’m not suggesting they don’t eat their money at the food court as long as they understand they only have ”x” amount of spending dollars to last ”x” amount of time, they can do what they want with it! Instilling the understanding will be the hardest part.

Involve young children with the purchase of things for them. Tell them you have $100 to buy school supplies and bring them with you so they can see what exactly $100 does or does not buy. To a child $100 is a lot of money, allowing them to see how far (or not-so-far) that money actually goes is a great lesson to teach.

Instilling money lessons in our children is invaluable. They’re never too young and it’s never too late to start.

Do you budget as a family? 

How to Have Family Fun on a Budget

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Family Fun on a BudgetAs a parent, you want to provide your kids with the best and you are looking forward to all family fun opportunities. Sometimes, however, financial limitations stand in the way of having a good time.  Having family fun on a budget is possible, as long as you are willing to put some effort into the process and to get creative. Here are several great family fun possibilities that will be almost 100 percent free.

 

Explore Nature

Instead of going to the cinema or to another local hotspot, start exploring nature with your children and spouse. Children today have been disconnected from nature and as a parent; you can do a lot to correct that.

A family picnic can be a great bonding experience. Pack some sandwiches, soft drinks and your favorite games. Use the day to explore nature, to show your children interesting things about plants and animals and to relax.

 

Avoid Popular Tourist Attractions

Stay away from the popular tourism attractions. Theme parks and other intensely advertised fun places will usually cost a fortune. At the same time, you will have to deal with a large crowd and very often, getting in will require several hours.

There are so many little known fun places in your city. You can have a city tour using public transportation buses. Show your children historic places and the most popular landmarks. You can have an entertaining history lesson and everybody is going to be having a blast.

 

DIY Family Fun

When you are trying to come up with something cheap to do as a family, always consider do it yourself projects.

Crafts and arts will encourage your children to fantasize and to explore their creativity. Such activities are inexpensive. Once you buy the basic supplies, you will get to use those several times.

Paint greeting cards together. Buy some clay and work with your little ones on the creation of handmade jewelry or action figures. You can even create your own board game that you will get to enjoy as a family, once it is finished.

 

Make Family Meals Together

Restaurant food can be of low quality and if you want to ensure healthy and delicious family meals, you will have to spend a lot of money on it. Just do a simple calculation to find out how much you are spending on eating out.

Cooking family meals will save you some money and it will also be the perfect family fun activity. Make cupcakes with your kids. You can organize a cupcake decoration contest or another fun competition that has something to do with food preparation or decorating.

Use these moments to teach kids about healthy food and the preparation of delicious and nutritional meals. Such activities will be both fun and highly educational.

 

Monitor Expenditure

Monitor expenditure and find out what you have been spending money on. Taking a look at the monthly spending list can provide some useful ideas about cutting down costs and discovering alternative, inexpensive forms of family fun.

Single parents should stick to fiscal discipline, though they would love to pamper their children. If necessary, work with forensic accountants to figure out what is going on in terms of spending. Such professionals like Forths Forensic Accountants will be of great assistance if you are going through a matrimonial dispute, as well.

You can have family fun without spending a fortune on it. We live in a commercial world and brands want you to think that you need to spend money, in order to be happy. Creativity and the desire to find alternatives to typical family activities will give you access to new fun possibilities. Quality family time is all about enjoying each other’s presence and trying to please your children. Being motivated to accomplish the goal will help you do it, even if you have no money to dedicate to family entertainment.

How else do you have fun on a family budget?