Category Archives: Parenting

Top Saving Tips For Summer Camp

05/29/2018 R.C. Liley Leave a comment

Sending your kids to summer camp is an enriching experience for them. It can teach them all about team work, decision making and interacting with others. They get to learn new skills, and build up resilience, which will definitely benefit them in adulthood. However paying for summer camp can also be an expensive experience for parents. The average cost of a day camp is over $300 per child. If you are looking at private or speciality camps, these can cost between $500-$1000 per week. For many parents, this is a necessary cost, when they are juggling work and childcare over the summer months. So how can you make allowances in your budget to pay for summer camp?

Using a dedicated savings account

There is no way around it, keeping children entertained costs money. When they are young, it is worth setting up a dedicated savings account kept solely for funding things like summer camps and school field trips. By paying a little into this account regularly throughout the year, you will be able to budget better for the summer months when they aren’t at school, and need entertaining. Managing your family finance can be made easy, simply by setting up a regular payment into this dedicated account. For instance, if you know that you need to pay $300 for camp, you’ll need to put by $25 a month.

Have a clear out

Part of really good spring cleaning, is getting rid of all of the clothes that don’t fit anymore, and the toys that are no longer played with. Every year, set by a weekend to have a clear out. You could decide to have a yard sale – you will be surprised how useful your unwanted possessions are to others. With the average price of a yard sale item being 85c, it could potentially make you hundreds of dollars to put towards camp costs. Alternatively, it is worth listing items that are in good condition on eBay, Gumtree, Craigslist or one of the local Facebook selling pages. Not only will you be able to make a little money to put towards summer camp, but you will be making your home more organized and tidy.

Look into bursaries and grants

Many summer camp foundations offer a limited number of grants to children that they feel would really benefit from the camp, or that have done something community spirited during the year. These grants recognize that there may be families that can’t necessarily afford the cost of a summer camp experience, but have children that deserve to take part in engaging and interesting activities. These funding opportunities are open to everybody.

Summer camp is a wonderful and exciting experience for children. With some regular saving, your children can spend the school holidays learning new skills and meeting great friends.

Life, Parenting

Give Your Children A Taste Of Your Own Childhood!

05/25/2018 R.C. Liley Leave a comment

Pexels

It might be worthwhile to give your children a taste of your own childhood! Not only is this a fun activity for the both of you, but it can help you bond and help them gain an understanding of your life at their age. The first step will be to remove all unnecessary devices on a weekend. This means planning in advance to go without phones, games consoles, laptops or any other form of electronic devices that swallows their time.

Now, children love these devices, meaning that this might be easier said than done. However, planning this in advance and ensuring a fun and long weekend of activities can help mitigate this a little. Next, consider the following:

Camping & Playing Outdoors

You might decide to embark upon an outdoor retreat, where you relax with your children, cook marshmallows on the fire, and tell spooky stories. You might simply do this in your backyard for ease of use, no need to head to the ends of the country to experience this unless you really need to. Then you might consider playing party games, having a party, or playing fun games like ‘army’ in the local woods. You might choose to buy a Spud Gun, the old classic weapon of children, and show them how it works. You might head on a nature trail, or play with a kite on the local beach, or build a treehouse with them out of planks of wood and nails. This can be an awesome thing to consider as long as you’re willing to put the effort in, but remember, it’s not exactly the safest thing you can construct for your child.

Movie Night

Why not have a movie night, spent watching the movies that were important to you as a child? You might even go all out and purchase a 4:3 boxed television and a VHS player to watch them in the quality you did as a child. Make your favorite childhood meal (and load up on the snacks and sweets,) and keep an indulgent evening relaxing with your children and experiencing something truly wonderful with them. After all, children know not what they have with the current movie effects they can see and take for granted, and the fact that Marvel’s cinematic universe is amazing and displays exactly what we had in our heads the whole time.

An Action Packed Day

What were the most important activities to you as a child? The ones that you truly enjoyed? Could it be bowling or go-karting? Paintball or fun outdoor sports? There’s more than likely going to be a center around you that offers this form of wonderful pursuit, and taking your children here can give you an incredible experience away from screens, maybe showing them the benefit of heading outside in the pursuit of sports or rough and tumble play.

With these tips, you are sure to give your children an excellent taste of your own childhood. Reminiscing has never felt so good.

Earn Income, Parenting

Boosting Your Finances As A Stay At Home Parent

05/14/2018 R.C. Liley Leave a comment

stay at home, parent, dad, mom, finances, make money — Photo by Steven Van Loy on Unsplash

If you want to boost your income, you’re not alone; a recent study found that 76 million Americans are struggling financially – and it can be even harder for single parents who have to pay child maintenance costs, especially if they are taking time off work. Thankfully there are a few ways to boost your income – and you don’t have to sacrifice the time that you spend at home looking after your children. Based on many blackout bingo reviews, you can even have fun playing games for real money. After all, there is very little point getting a job outside of the home if it only covers child care costs, as you won’t actually be earning any extra money for your family. Here are three ways that you can earn money as a stay at home parent.

Look For A Work From Home Job

There are lots of great jobs that you can do from home, including freelance writing and web design. While both of these jobs require some level of skill, there are other jobs that are easier to walk into, such as working as a virtual assistant. A virtual assistant is someone who helps an individual or a business with basic admin tasks, from booking trips to responding to emails. If you want to have a little fun at the same time, you can even play games for real money. All of these jobs allow you to work from home and set your own schedule, which is ideal for a busy parent who needs to spend most of the day with their child.

Become A Seller

You can sell unwanted items from your home on eBay for a little extra cash, or if you are feeling creative you could try making things to sell (such as accessories, handmade ornaments or jewelry). Lots of people prefer to buy things online now because it is more convenient, so if you are selling a quality product someone is sure to buy it! This is an easy way to start a new income stream, but be aware if you are selling second-hand items you probably won’t get as much as you originally paid for the item.

Access Money Tied Up In Your Home

Most Americans have a lot of money tied up in their home, even if they have a mortgage; a recent study found that the average American has around $150,506 built up in their home. If you are a homeowner and you want to access the money tied up in your home, you can consider taking out an equity loan or a reverse mortgage. Both of these options can really help if you are struggling financially, but they are only available to homeowners. If you want to try and improve your financial state even more, you could try and learn more about the many investment options by visiting sites similar to https://www.sofi.com/investing-101-center/ where you’ll find guidance on many investing topics and goal setting strategies to see what’s right for you.

No-one likes worrying about money, especially if they have children to provide for. Thankfully these options make it a little easier for stay at home parents to get by.