school holidays - what's your budget

going_nowhere_fast

I know the answer to this question depends on your income and level of debt so what suits one person wont suit another but treats for LO is an area where I could make huge cutbacks, school holidays in particular are tricky for me. I could bring my DFD much closer if I got this area of my budget in hand. I do lots of free activities, take pack lunches everywhere we go, look for discount codes and vouchers but come the school holidays the temptation of zoos, theme parks, cinema trips gets too much for me and I over spend. I know I'm foolish worrying my LO will miss out if we dont do these things, it really wouldn't do any harm.

How much do you allocate monthly towards fun such as cinema trips, days out etc?

mozzy10

What's LO?

PeacefulWaters

mozzy10 wrote: »

What's LO?

Little otter would be my guess. Or little one. LO is so much quicker to type than "child" or "son" you see.

This half term I've allocated NIL for additional spending on my son.

We will kick a ball around in the park.

We will walk through the local woods together.

He'll do some homework.

He will hammer me at some computer game.

He will enjoy cooking a meal.

Over a year he gets a couple of cinema tickets, maybe a zoo / safari park visit and numerous football matches. £250 a year. £21 a month. He seems happy.

shortcrust

PeacefulWaters wrote: »

Little otter would be my guess. Or little one. LO is so much quicker to type than "child" or "son" you see....

Three key presses for LO and three key presses for 'son'. A whopping five key presses for 'child', so I have to concede there's a substantial two key press saving there.

"DH and I were LOL at LO's antics!"

PlymouthMaid

When my girls were young we used to have one 'special' (ie involving some money) trip each week of the 6 weeks hols but every other day was free/cheap with picnics etc.

Goldiegirl

mozzy10 wrote: »

What's LO?

I worked that one out, but I struggled with DFD. I thought it was Dear Friend's Daughter at first, but why would you want to move her closer.

I finally worked out it was Debt Free Date.

These abbreviations can be very confusing.

Some posts have so many, it's almost impossible to read.

solentsusie

Goldiegirl wrote: »

I worked that one out, but I struggled with DFD. I thought it was Dear Friend's Daughter at first, but why would you want to move her closer.

I finally worked out it was Debt Free Date.

These abbreviations can be very confusing.

Some posts have so many, it's almost impossible to read.

I think it might be a throwback from when we all had Nokia 3310's instead of smart phones.... I absolutely hate all of these unnecessary abbreviations.

But go on somewhere like Mumsnet and it is even worse. One of the numerous reasons I left that website.

going_nowhere_fast

PlymouthMaid wrote: »

When my girls were young we used to have one 'special' (ie involving some money) trip each week of the 6 weeks hols but every other day was free/cheap with picnics etc.

Thats a good routine to get into.

I have a weakness for these weekend morning films at £1.50 a ticket but find that they are adding up. Ive learnt a lot from this site, a big lesson learnt is that the pennies here and there add up to pounds and when you are clearing debt that matters.