How do you not feel like you are working for nothing when you are Old Style?

Lily_The_Legend

Skint_yet_Again wrote: »

7. build a tent inside or out and play camping. Cook sausages on BBQ or indoors and eat in the tent. My DS used to love this

This brought back memories for me! My mum used to put dining chairs out in the garden and a tablecloth over the top and me and my cousins would have a picnic under it and stay there for hours!

ziggy2004

my children's favourite activity at the moment is blackberry picking and then jam making. We are currently exploring what other edibles we can find locally.

They also love baking their own bread and my oldest today asked when the autumn table was coming back. We do a season table for most seasons but they really love the Autumn one and collect whatever they can find.

We also invested in a local membership which gives us entry to a dozen or so local attractions some indoor and some outside which gives a nice balance.

lollipopsarah

Yes it seems like never ending gloom at the moment, but we must remember that there area always others much worse off than us.
I agree about the library, it's worth asking if they have a mobile service, my kids loved visiting the bus every thursday to pick their books.
If the weather is really bad and wet, just wrap up and go out and enjoy it - jump in some puddles, make mud pies or whatever your darling will treasure the memories.
Chin up and best wishes.
xx

ALIBOBSY

Just realised that I was so slow that other posters had said almost exactly what I said lol.

I have found the biggest area we can save in is on the food budget. TBH I find the supermarkets in general are a bit of a rip off, and I would never shop in just one store. I use local farm shops for meat and veggies, but we are semi rural so its miles better quality, often organic and usually cheaper or the same price as the big stores- but have a look what local resources you have. Our kids love going out foraging-black berries, damsons etc and you get something to make when you get home from a free resource-jams/wine/cider/squash/sauces/fruit leathers etc etc.

I have to admit I like Aldi though as they have many continental products and virtually all there stuff is better quality than the supermarkets. I like that there is less for the kids to ask for and we can whip around quickly. None of that offers here then all change the week after, just steady prices I can budget for.

Having the time at home means like me you can bake, and cook most meals from scratch again saving money then this can be used for treats. Homemade popcorn is a case in point a bog of dried corn is only around 70 or 80p and you just need say one or two desert spoons of the dry stuff to pop a massive bowlful, you can do loads of flavours-sweet/salted/buttered/cinnemon/even spicy for pence.

Seek out good deals and offers eg. blockbuster do loads of family films for 99p or over the summer they did an offer where you paid £8 then you could take one film at a time, as many as you wanted from mid july to mid september. The kids even enjoy just going to the shop to look around, picked a dvd anf came home to pop our own corn.

There are also ways of getting the expensive treats, but paying less. Dominos pizza take paypal online and there always seem to be good offer codes floating around on the internet so I do surveys online for paypal money and/or sell stuff online again into paypal and then find a good offer code so we get a "free" pizza night that the kids see as "proper" takeaway now and again.

Swagbucks are good-have a look on the swagbucks thread in up your income, fairly easy to earn £10-£25 of amazon vouchers or paypal in a month-use for treats or save for crimbo pressies.

If you use tesco they do vouchers you can save for days out.

Find out about your local area, there are loads of places doing free or cheap stuff for families-pond dipping, nature walks, crafty stuff etc etc.

The most important thing is to see you are now time rich and money poor so maximise your income and see time doing stuff together-free of cheap is best as "treats". Its a change in mindset and more work than just pulling out the credit card, but so much better in the long run and having younger kids it will be easier for them to get used to.

Ali x

ALIBOBSY

Our local UCI does a kids film on sat morning and sunday morning at 11 am. Kids pay £2 (their site says £1-£4 dependant on which cinema it is) and you get one adult free with a paying child, so for us as eldest is past kid films and old enough to stop alone its £6 for the girls and we are free yay.

Ali x

quintwins

I'm also a SAHM with 3 kids, 2 ages 6 and one ages 3, the older 2 are at school now, so i have mornings with the youngest, it costs £3.20 to take him swimming, or it costs £8 if we go as a family on a saturday. thats our main day out.

Other than that we do buns, play doh, puddle jumping, duvet days, the park if it's dry.

We sometimes go to the soft play area to meet my friends, we bring a 23p juice from tesco and some sandwichs, crisps and buns so it's not as expensive.


I keep meaning to bring him to the libary but we never make it that far i think i'll make a point of doing it this week.

goldenpony

I don't have any kids of my own yet but often have to entertain my OH's nephews and niece at short notice and on a shoestring which means you have get extremely creative in looking at things you usually just throw away!

Tin-cans can become bird feeders (fat and seed mixture) or little lanterns for the garden (fill tins with water, freeze and then punch out a basic design using a hammer and nail...not so good for the little ones but boys seem to think anything involving the use of a proper grown up hammer is fun!) while styrofoam takeaway containers can become printing blocks and stamps with a pencil and some cheap acrylic paint. Once I bought a roll of brown parcel paper from the pound shop, taped it to the living room table and let them doodle/paint away. The real allure of this is that I tack it to the wall afterwards and ooh and ahh profusely over it. :rotfl:

If your daughters are into fashion and things, maybe revamping some stuff in their wardrobes together would be fun? Some cheap trim and sequins and imagination goes a long way...princesses and fairies have to have some variety in their outfits, right?

And finally, I'm going to recommend pinterest, it can be a little cloying, but there are some great ideas there.

Often, I've found just listening to them and engaging them in a silly way works just as well as all of these things, children are masters of amusing themselves with very little if given the opportunity, I think.

Hope some of that helps.

EssexGirl

Have a look and see if you have a local Children's Centre. We have 2 fairly close and they do lots of activities for under 5's. All free.
That way they can do painting and sticking all for nothing and you don't have to clean your house of the mess afterwards! Win win.

TheThriftyScrumpers

Hi,

I have a 3 and 6 year old. Some of the inexpensive things we love to do are :-

baking - cakes, biscuits, pizza (making faces on top) etc

Geocaching - DH is becoming quite obsessed! If you haven't heard of it, it is gps treasure hunting. You hunt a hidden treasure box and when you find it, you log that you have been and you can take a piece of treasure and then you leave some treasure for someone else. If you put it into google and have a read. (btw the "treasure" is usually a rubber, or pencil (think party bag stuff) so not expensive. It gets us all out in the open air, we take a picnic and drinks. Great fun.

Saturday cinema - already mentioned. Ours costs £1 per ticket.

Home cinema - basics popcorn and a kids film that we have recorded off of the tv. We find they show good films on sundays around five ish. You will be finding small bits of popcorn around the living room for some time but it is worth it for the snuggle time!

Cbeebies website (or similar), they have games, recipes, stories, printable colour in sheets, craft ideas and songs. If they have a favourite tv character, google it to see if they have a website. The charlie and lola one for example is good.

Tesco vouchers for days out/meals etc - Dh and I both have tesco credit cards which we put everything on and then pay off each month. This maximises the value of vouchers you get as all spends (not just those at Tescos) qualify for points. We have used our for days at zoos, meals at Prezzo's, magazine subscriptions. Basically real treat stuff. The zoo day should have cost us £50 entrance fees as a family. We swapped up our vouchers, took a pack up and drinks and stayed from dawn until dusk. You often get 3 or 4 times the value of the vouchers (eg, we swapped £30 of club card vouchers to get £120 worth of prezzo vouchers).

If you are on facebook see if you can join a local selling site. They are closed sites so you need to be invited in by a current member. It is just like ebay but with no fees. You upload a pic, a brief description and price wanted and that is it. The sites usually limit you to 2 or three postings a day but the beauty is as they are local sites people come and collect or you can drop off and earn some cash quickly. We have sold masses of kids stuff (toys, clothes, travel cots etc), furniture, kitchen equipment etc. I picked up some gap furred lined wellies today for ds for £3

I will keep thinking and pop back and post if I think of anything else. I have tried to think of the ways we have cheap/free fun and make our money stretch as far as possible. I hope it helps xx

airgead

I really understand your situation, and I hope being on the forum has made you realise that you're not alone in feeling this way, many of us are in the same boat, and its not just today's generation that feel the pinch.

I think there has been some great advice. All the activities and suggestions that have been mentioned I would agree with. You are lucky that your children are still young enough not to be too caught up in the materialistic society we live in. My daughter has just started school, so far we have managed to sidestep all mentions of Hello Kitty, Barbie et al, but I know the peer pressure will mount.

I relly liked Fuddle's wisdom on being a happy Mother. OK, money is tight, and lets not pretend that spending every day with toddlers isn't tough sometimes, but try to see the positive. Some Mothers are working so hard they never see their kids, and spend their hard earned cash on them to stop the guilt and fill that gap. Those above who have said that spending time with your kids is the most important thing are SO RIGHT! And entertaining them doesn't have to be expensive. Try to tap into your inner kid, the one that made dens, turned the lights out and told creepy stories, baked cakes and licked the bowl, all these magical things.

You have a fantastic opportunity to teach your kids valuable lessons in thrift. It a lesson worth learning for all of us. Teach them that fun and friendship doesn't have to cost money, that material things aren't the be all and end all. I try to explain to my kids about the cost of eveything, and if we can't afford something, I tell them. I don't want them to share our adult worries about money, but I want them to know it doesn't grow on trees. If you're feeling down about it, remember what valuable life lessons you are teaching them, and feel proud as a parent! It wil also make life easier as the peer pressure begins to kick in with school and all that.

My daughter has been in school just a couple of weeks and has already been to two full-on birthday parties - I'm talking whole class invited, hired venues, entertainers, party bags. There is no way I will be doing this for my daughter. Apart from the cost, I just feels it sets a precedent at 5 or 6 years old - where do you go from there? So I have already decided, it will be 2 or 3 of her closest friends, we'll stay at home, but we'll do something different. Maybe we'll do fairy cakes, dressing up, a treasure hunt. I have a few months to plan! Whatever it is, the secret will be in the spin and the magic that is created around it, not in the money spent.

Its hard to do all the spin and magic and creative, cheap suff when you're feeling down. So don't give yourselves a hard time. Count your blessings - you are together as a couple, you have time to spend bringing up your kids yourself, you can teach them great lessons about life, whilst avoiding the materialistic rat race that breeds guilty parents and spoilt, unhappy kids.

There, doesn't sound so bad now, does it?!
Hang in there, your kids will thank you in the long run! (I can say that with authority being the child of skint parents who bought us very little but taught us great values and skills for life.)