How To Afford More For Your Kids On A Budget

Alright, last night I asked my Instagram followers what they wanted to see today.

You spoke. I listened.

In today’s post I’m going to be sharing just how we afford all the fun we do with our little man while on a budget.

Honestly, we weren’t able to do as much as we can now just a year ago. We also know that in a year we plan on being able to do even more. It’s all about making progress around here.

This time last year J was in school full time and we were living off just one income. We were surviving, but not necessarily thriving. We had to carefully watch what we spent to make sure we had enough to cover all of our bills from month-to-month. Luckily we had done some pretty heavy planning before he back to school, so we never went without.

But now life is a little different – we’re back to being a two income household, which means a couple of things:

we get to do more
we get to save more
we’re still acting like we’re living off one income for the majority of our bills

But if you’re ready to afford more for you kids while on a budget then you’ve come to the right place. We’re going to go over the steps we’ve taken to make sure we can do more for and with our little man while still making progress towards our bigger financial goals.

Make A List

The first step in trying to afford more is to make a list. We have a dream list of all the things we would love to do with our little man. You need to do the same. Here’s a snippet of our list:

gymnastics
private preschool
Baseball/ T-ball
Day trips
Vacations
Summer camps
And more

Once you have your list that’s when you need to start planning. How much is each activity going to cost? What age do they need to be to start it? Where is it going to be?

We prioritized our list into one he was able to do right now at 2 years old. We know he’s still a little young for baseball and summer camps, so we don’t have to worry about those right now. But we do have him in gymnastics and we love taking day trips to new places.

Take A Good Look At Your Budget

Next, you need to take a good look at your budget to see where you can squeeze out some extra money. For instance, we realized that not eating out about three times a month was all we needed to cover the cost of gymnastics.

Once you determine where you can get some extra cash then you need to decide if it’s actually feasible to make the cuts. For us, we had to weigh the thought of eating out three more times in a month with the idea of our son being more active with other children.

It really was a no brainer, but it may not be that easy for you. So make a pro/con list. Talk it over and then make a decision. The best part about making decisions? You can always change your mind. So don’t worry about making a mistake.

Plan Ahead

If you’re wanting to make more day trips, road trips and be more spontaneous then you need to plan ahead.

I know, I know. How do you plan ahead to be spontaneous, Meredith?

Well I’m going to tell you… You need to juts understand and accept that you’re going to do things on a whim so you need to be saving for those. Now you don’t have to plan for each specific trip to the zoo, pumpkin patch, or road trip but just know that you will take them.

What has worked for us is having a category in our sinking funds earmarked for miscellaneous activities. This category is for all the last minute trips and fun activities we come up with. We don’t put a lot towards this category every month and it’s the first to get cut on tighter months, but we have been able to build a little stockpile without much effort.

Decide how much you can easily put back each month for those just-for-fun trips. It may only be $20, but doing that for a few months could make for a really nice trip to the zoo or to the pumpkin patch.

Be Smart After Spending

This is one of the most important parts of being able to afford more – you have to be smart after a purchase. On the weeks following a road trip you should be cooking at home more, not eating out, and using what you have on hand instead of going grocery shopping.

Try meal planning every two weeks so that way you know with certainty that you have enough food to prepare dinners and even lunches on those weeks following. Make sure you aware of your spending so you don’t go over budget.

Spend Gifts With Care

If you ever receive cash or gift cards for birthdays and holidays then make them stretch. We take on a hoarder type mentality. We want the money to last as long as possible so we tend not to spend on eating out and other expenses that we already have budgeted for. We like to save this extra amounts for more fun occasions.

Reward Points

Now, I’ve talked about using your credit card before so if you haven’t seen that post I highly recommend checking it out to make sure you don’t throw your entire budget out of whack.

For example we use our credit card for gas and groceries then pay it off each month. At the end of the year we take our reward points and cash them in. That’s usually the majority, if not all, the money we spend on Christmas gifts.

So try to save your reward points and give them a purpose. If you want to take a family trip every summer then save your reward points for that occasion. Make your reward points your spending cash while on vacation.

Try to earn free nights at hotels to save money. Most hotels have reward programs that are free and you earn points for staying. In the next few weeks J and I will be traveling to Kansas City for free (except the cost of gas and food). He earned free tickets through his work and I had enter a drawing at a local hotel and won enough points to cover a night at a hotel in Kansas City. So this trip that we thought and planned to cost us quite a bit, suddenly just got a whole lot cheaper! Which means the money we were setting aside can be used for other fun activities with our little man.

Don’t Over Do It

Be mindful of how much you can actually afford and how much your little one can do. For instance, when the time comes for your little princess to start dance lessons then drop them from gymnastics or go back through these steps to see about finding the money to afford both in your budget. We know that when the day comes that Dent is ready for a new activity and we’re still in this financial position then we would cancel gymnastics.

However, I know and you know that the goal is to continue to earn more and save more. So that we can have the hopes of being able to do all. the. things. our little ones want to do.