children- why do they cost so much?

OneSpike

Sallys_Savings wrote:

One of my daughters is in year 10 and there are FOUR trips that have came home. The first being the GCSE History battlefields trip ..costing £260 for 3 days away!! The second a skiing trip in December ...costing £604 and the third a trip to South Africa £1340 and an adventure holiday which I'm unsure of the cost of. And then there is different day trips too!!

Fortunately we did know that these trips were coming up (she has older siblings) so we were prepared with our savings. (and she had been saving birth/xmas money all of last year and this year and saved £632 to go towards them)

I truely believe in letting them experience as much as they can (and her older bros/sisters have been too), but it has put a strain on our finances.
I'm glad we knew in advance and feel sorry for the ones who didn't.

This post made me feel really bad! I agree with everything you say and know the rugby tours and battlefield trips will be looming, not to mention French exchange, Army Cadet trips etc. It really is the pits to have to say no. Unfortunately we can't begin to manage to save enough, and our two eldest are in consecutive years - yrs 8 and 9 atm - so I know it's going to be a bit non-stop. Pre-LBM we took them to Europe this summer, partly for a family do, as we like them to have as many experiences as possible too, but it's going to have to last them for a while! Fortunately at DD's primary school contributions towards trips are voluntary, so we contribute when we can (I'm talking £2-3 here and there, not hundreds!) and don't when we can't. I'm not generally one for feeling guilty, but I do about this

pudding06

IMHO, the school should be paying for things which are essential to the curriculum, and trips should be very much seen as an optional extra, rather than a fait accompli. Still, I suppose the teachers like the foreign breaks, especially as they can't afford to holiday during school holidays because the prices are sky high, so some good comes of it all.

I'm a teacher and beilieve me most teachers will do anything to get out of going on school trips!! They can be an absolute nightmare, with the risk of being sued or prosecuted into the bargain.

Its great if you can afford to let you kids go - but ski trips etc are not essentials. Its up to you - if you can afford them then let them go - if you cant then learn to say no.

my 4 kids knew I couldnt afford them when they were at school - I stayed at home to raise them myself - so they never asked. That didnt mean they didnt want to go - they just didnt want to put us in an awkward position of having to say no.
If its essential - eg field work for gcse then contact the school to see if theres a fund for hardship cases. there usually is.

just learn to say no perhaps - just like in the shops when they want, want, want

pudds

miggy

We have just paid £175 for youngest to go on a school trip which his siblings went on - but it was £130? when the first one went.
The older two were allowed on the KS3 German trip @ around £450 each (allowing for spending money & clothes, but the school wouldn't have allowed them to take £200, so I'm thankful for that!)
We have denied DD a school trip to Italy, and passed over a £600 skiing trip for a child in primary school (which would have come up immediately before the £175 trip).
Now our eldest, who is doing GCSE German, desperately wants the next school trip to Germany @ £500!
We told him 'no' and he offered to get a job to help pay, so I rang the school and said we could pay part of it but not the lot - the school has agreed to fund part of it, no problem. I think schools often have a discretionary fund for those who need it. *However* DS hasn't started looking for a job and if he doesn't I may well pull the plug on the trip as I don't think it's fair to ask the school and us to fund it and for him (aged 15) not to contribute.
I homeschooled one of our teens for a while and we did a lot of trips - and they cost very little. They were all local, though, and we didn't have to fund supply teachers to cover her classes, which is often what's happening with school trips.
Kids... definitely my most expensive hobby <g>... but worth it!
Miggy

cathybird

I've not had children, for one reason & another, and while a small part of me wishes I had (while another part of me knows it was the right decision not to), I do think I'd be in an even worse financial position than I am now if I had because I was so spectacularly crap with money up until recently anyway. I see the struggles my boyfriend goes through with two teenage boys, who are not that bad really, they're nice kids but they do expect expensive presents, the latest games etc. I think it can be really difficult in our culture to avoid kids getting the consumerist mentality very early. All my respect to parents who bring up their kids to think differently.

tinkerbell212

For the Topic Opener, for sure there must be more parents who find that the amounts for school trips are very high. Can't you get together with a group of parents and discuss these outings with the school before they are being dumped upon parents. Personally I think that there has to be a very good reason to take kids abroad, when probably a camping weekend with bonfires would be just as much fun for kids (I used to love it). I think it is a bit to easy for schools to say we are going here and we need the money next week, full stop. I also think that schools should set up a way for parents to pay every month into a fund for their own child so that the payments are spread (and the school would get interest which they could use for extra's during the trip, or maybe even to subsidise children where the parents really cannot afford these outings). And £200 spending money like somebody else said? I wouldn't even walk around with £200 in my pocket, that's just plain irresponsible and gives completely the wrong message. And that for 3 days...

tinkerbell212

Sallys_Savings wrote:

One of my daughters is in year 10 and there are FOUR trips that have came home. The first being the GCSE History battlefields trip ..costing £260 for 3 days away!! The second a skiing trip in December ...costing £604 and the third a trip to South Africa £1340 and an adventure holiday which I'm unsure of the cost of. And then there is different day trips too!!

Fortunately we did know that these trips were coming up (she has older siblings) so we were prepared with our savings. (and she had been saving birth/xmas money all of last year and this year and saved £632 to go towards them)

I truely believe in letting them experience as much as they can (and her older bros/sisters have been too), but it has put a strain on our finances.
I'm glad we knew in advance and feel sorry for the ones who didn't.

£1340???? You can go away with your whole family for that money. That's just way over the top I think personally. I really don't think your child misses out that much by not going to things like that. I never had stuff like that as a child, and only started travelling so extravagantly when I made my own money. At least I could appreciate it because of a. my age and b. because I worked and saved for it all by myself and c. because I knew that I never had to put my mum and dad through the stress of how on earth they were going to pay for it!

jet77

At work so only read your first post. I'd take her to Birmingham because the German market is here on New Street. Luv Jxxx