My wife and I finished buying our children's clothes and school
supplies 2 weeks ago. It was a lot of
money to spend in one weekend, and there is more to come with school fees and
the fall sports/activities registration coming up. In fact we have found mid August to mid
September to be more expensive than Christmas for our family.
We are fairly frugal, and my wife is amazing with a
budget. Before we did any clothes
shopping she went through the kids current clothes to see what still fits and
the shape of the clothes. None of them
had much of a growth spurt this last year, so many of the clothes can be worn
again, those that didn't fit were given to friends that could use them or to
goodwill. There were a few new things
they needed, so we made a list. We went
to Old Navy and stuck to the list. Old
Navy carries its own brand and doesn't carry popular brand name clothing, but
the quality and prices are decent, although we did notice price increases over last
year.
We purchased school supplies through our local school. They have a program where the teachers list
all the supplies needed and the school will do then through a supplier and just
have the supplies available the week before school starts for pick up. The price is actually quite good, so we went
with the school program, but still had to buy supplies for our other 2 kids. We ended up doing Staples for the remaining 2
because the whole selection was there and the prices were pretty much what we wanted. We bought our oldest one brand name binder
that cost 4 times as much as the regular binders, but everything else was purchased
on the inexpensive side.
We ended up spending about $700 for 4 kids' school clothes and
supplies for the new school year. It could
have been much more, but that was a big enough hit to our budget that we are
glad we were able to keep it down.
Compare this to a close friend's family. She has 3 kids in school and spent about just
over $1,000 on clothing and supplies. When
we were talking with here about costs she asked us how we kept the costs
down. She also then explained to us how
she felt it was important for kids to have brand name items to feel good about
themselves. When we talked about buying
a $17 hoodie vs and brand name one for $55 the difference in costs became
quickly apparent, but our friend says she just can't see reducing the purchases
because of the types of clothes she wants her kids to wear.
We have had the same discussion with other people about
birthday parties. We did what is now the
standard party of having 8 to 12 kids, pizza, a birthday cake, and then goody
bags worth about $6 to $10 for each attendee.
We ended up spending over $200 without even including the price of the
gift. With as many kids as we have my
wife and I decided that we needed to do something different that would not
impact our budget as much.
We now offer our kids $100 cash for their birthdays along
with 1 friend for a sleepover. They get
our family dinner of the b-day child's choice (often Kraft Dinner, sometimes
spaghetti) and a movie rental of the b-day child's choice, along with
popcorn. Plus they get their gift. For each additional child they want for the
sleepover they get $25 less, until at 5 kids they get no cash. We still make the party fun with activities and
games and a great homemade cake, but we don't do goody bags unless they are
taking home a craft they made at the party.
We have heard from friends that they wish they could do what
we do, but they feel obligated to do the $200 party because their kids' friends
do those types of parties. They feel like
it will make their children feel bad to do less or different than the other
kids. I'm not sold on that. We have decided that clothes, school supplies
and birthday parties are not a competition.
Our kids are involved in community activities and groups. Do we need to spend
more money on these other areas too? I
think it doesn't hurt to lets kids know there are budgets and limits to what
they can have or what we as parents can do for them.
Let me know your thoughts about spending on kids. Jerry
What drives me crazy is the extras like hot lunch fundraisers, or the amount we have to pay for every field trip, or even some of the classes now. I pay a lot of taxes and you would think taxes should cover those costs. My kids is hoping to go on a big trip with the band and we have told him he can't go. It just costs too much, and I know other parents have said the same thing, but there is peer pressure from parents about how much we are depriving our son because we aren't sending him to a foreign country at 14 years old. It's too much! We can't save for university and spend a couple of thousand on a band trip too.
ReplyDeleteI'm disappointed that you would put money over the value of your children's education and sense of worth. Schools do a lot of important things for our children, and the extras matter to help them develop into well rounded individuals. Not paying for them to go on the band trip means they will be left out of that great experience and may mean they get picked on. It is the same with buying cheap clothes, backpacks or binders. It's important to instil confidence in our children so they can deal with bullies and overbearing employers. Choosing the cheapest clothing or activities shows how much your really value them, and they recognize that. I would hope you seriously reconsider how you spend money on your children. It's important for us as parents to provide these things to our children, because if we don't, who will?
ReplyDeleteGood grief, 'A loving mother' needs to get a life. To equate one's self worth on clothes, activities, and trips proves just how far our society has fallen. All our children want is our time.
ReplyDeleteTo 'Broke Parent', choosing to save for University should always trump spending for the present. There's only so much money to go around-when our daughter wanted to go on a trip with the 'Travel Club' we gave her a choice-go on the school trip or we would make a substantial contribution to her RESP. She chose the RESP because she she'd rather be debt free after graduating college than having debt before she even starts her career.
Dear Loving Mother, I appreciate your comments about investing time and money in your kids to help them have confidence when going out into the world. I firmly believe that is important as well.
ReplyDeleteEveryone has a different budget and different ideas about how to best help their kids grow up and develop. With my family budget we make choices about what we are doing as a family and as individuals, and sometimes we choose to do things that cost less than the activity we would really like to choose. This year as a family we chose to purchase a family swim pass at the local pool instead of going to Calaway Park. We only allocate a certain amount to those types of activities and it ended up being a choice between the two, and we chose the swimming pool. Other families are able to do more activities based on the budget they have and what they choose to do. I'm happy for them if they can do that and I'm happy for you that you are able to do that as well. I'm sure your children enjoy the experiences that you help them have, just like I enjoyed the ones my parents gave me. Jerry