The Accession Finance $10K Challenge – Week 6

Ahhhh! Week 6.

When we decided to start this challenge, we prepared a budget of our current expenses and we split it up into categories:

Needs: Fixed

Needs: Negotiatable

Wants

Cut

One of the expenses in the ‘cut’ column had to be entertainment for the kids. We were spending $50 per week or $2,600 per year. This would include things like play centres, mini golf, ice skating and food and drink while we were out exploring. Now that we are juggling kinder, day care, swimming lessons etc it was pretty evident that we needed to make a little adjustment.

We decided to cut our budget to $100 per month. This will save us a massive $1,400 per year! BUT… the catch is that the kids still need to be entertained… because… BOYS…

So here are my tips for keeping the kids busy while cutting the costs.

1. Make the most of parks and playgrounds. Here’s some of our favourites

2. On a warm day, cool down at your local free water playground. Find some here

3. Take lunch when you go out (tip: keep bread in the freezer and then put some ham in the frozen bread to keep the ham nice and fresh)

4. Take your own drinks

5. Visit your local library for some rhyme time or story time

6. Visit the NGV

7. Take a ride on the free city circle tram (we park at Harbourtown- less than $10 for the day and it has access to the tram)

8. Head to a free work shop at Bunnings

9. Go for a walk by the beach or a nice park

10. Head to your local council website to find out if there is a festival on

These are all ideas to get out of the house on a budget… but I recently stumbled across the best idea for a budget activity at home: I get Mr 4 to go through the junk mail and cut out pictures of things that he likes and paste it into a scrap book. It was an activity that I planned to use to help teach him to read – I was going to cut out words and pictures (ie – of ‘CARS’) but we have been so busy lately I’m yet to put the time into it. But it’s his favourite thing to do. He calls his scrap book ‘his views’ which is quite sweet.

So the tally so far is:

Week 1 – Insurance $190 saved

Week 2 – Gifts/Fun Memberships $388 saved

Week 3 – The $10 Sacrifice $520 saved

Week 4 – Time for the Snip $ 0 saved

Week 5 – BSS $600 saved

Week 6 – Kids Entertainment $1400 saved

Total: $3098 saved

So far in 6 weeks we have made changes that will have saved us $3098 by the end of the year. We are well on our way to our $10,000 target!

See you next week,

Nat x

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