Welcome to Day 2 of our road map to a summer filled with wonderful memories, family bonding, and intentional fun! The purpose of this challenge is to help you get ready for the summer vacation that you and your family deserve!
Yesterday we created our family’s summer bucket list. I hope you enjoyed this activity and it starts to become a tradition in your own family! It has become one tradition that we started that the kids are so excited to participate in every year!
Today we are going to take that summer bucket list and get real with it! If your family is anything like mine, some of these activities cost money! Many of ours are cheap or even free but there are a few are not (swimming lessons, horsemanship camp, and our family vacation to name just a few!). Today we are going to rework our family budget to pay for those “extra” summer activities.
From our own list, I know that horsemanship camp is around $300. My oldest daughter loves this and tries to go every year depending on our summer schedule. Last summer between softball and other activities it just didn’t work but this year she is very excited to be able to go. To help her learn the value of money, this year we decided that she would have to pay for half of the expense. I am a true believer in experiences rather than “stuff.” This may seem steep to some of you but she has been planning all year by saving some of her birthday money and by doing chores to meet her goal (and she has had her money ready for several months)! Each family has different priorities and that’s ok! This is just how we parent.
Each of these expenses need to be accounted for in your budget. If you already budget for summer, that’s awesome! If you don’t, you will need to find a way to account for those expenses. You can use money in savings, allocate money that was going to one category to these activities or find a way to earn some extra income (think garage sales, picking up a few hours of work, selling items on Facebook/Craigslist, tweaking your grocery or gas budget, using coupons, or just cutting back in general).
For today, sit down and estimate how much extra money you will need for your activities on your bucket list. Then look at your budget and decide how you are going to pay for them. After you have your bucket list included in the budget, you are done!
Do you budget for summer activities throughout the year? Do you do anything special to help account for those expenses?
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