Don't know about you but my purse is always stretched BIG TIME by the last week of Jan. It's the worst time for everyone and even more so for parents after Christmas. Part of self-care is entertaining kids outside as well as inside, but also not completely neglecting the family by watching pennies. But is it possible to have an exciting schedule and be Sensible Sally?
Here's some things to try:
1. Batch Visiting
The most sensible way to see the city is to basically group your activities by area or locality. I have a running sheet of places by location and I'll pull up the surrounding activities when we are on a trip. There are some great sites like Happity , Time Out and bloggers like Bablands who do this for you.
2. Travel budgets
I am still nailing this one but getting out and about in London is EX PENS IVE!. Best thing I do is a weekly travel budget. I find it easier to group activities into far travel days, near days, and then walking distance days. I place a budget on the day Like £15 on a weekend or £7 on a weekday and work backward from there choosing car, bus or travel by the budget.
I keep track of all of this by looking at my bank balance and travel pot on Monzo.
3. Offers
I'm still rubbish at this but I will get better. My best budget hack is just having a 2-year-old and prioritising things that are 'kids go free under 3'! I look out for family group tickets when I am out with friends and their kids as well. He's also young enough and I am lucky enough to have him on weekdays so visit places off-peak.
There are loads of offers and Kiddosadventures has a great blog for kids activities and looking for deals and offers around cinema and theater, eating out and holidays. She’s recently mentioned Tesco clubcard . Admittedly parenting gets more expensive with more kids when you are likely to need even more offers but everyone can benefit from taking a couple quid off SOMETHING .
4. Packed Lunch.
Lunch on the go is my bugbear because little SpACEr is NOT obsessed with food and will happily barely eat any. So we combat that by bringing something he WILL like or ordering the basics off a menu if we need to eat out (like pasta, rice and pasta). I bring a small ice cream, snack budget. Oh yeah, he'll always eat that.
I want to get into more creative food prep to see if that will make a difference and involve him as an anecdote to pack batch everything (check out Jordan Page for tips on food prep). Sometimes I will splurge on Pret if I’ve been really good all week.
5. Bring an activity toy
The more you involve your kids in what they're seeing, the more engaged they'll be. And the less likely they are to waste money and time. ALSO, the less likely they are to ask for a toy from the shop because they already have one! I discovered this accidentally when we went to see Little SpACEr's favourite Andy Adventures clock at the Natural History Museum. It didn't matter that there was no stock of Andy-related merch there, he had his little clock with him and was reenacting the trip for WEEKS afterward. Check out instagrammer @miniartexplorer for some of her creations.
That's it. Hope this saves you a bob or two!
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