I bet you have not thought of all these five different ways to do really fun things with your family without spending money. We all like to go and spend money at the movies or in restaurants but you can’t do that every day and be fiscally responsible. Especially when you have small kids, you need to be planning ahead for college, for the car when they are a teenager, and all the other expenses that will come up with raising kids.
Number one is obvious. Going to local parks when the weather is nice is an easy way to get out and have a lot of fun with your kids. As the runaround on playgrounds they’re getting more fit and having a good time and likely making friends. If your kids are little bit older you can still pull this off by taking a frisbee, hacky sack or a soccer ball to the field and working on physical skills with them.
Number two is often overlooked. It is going to all the fantastic free events near where you live that you are probably not even aware of. Colleges, high schools, middle schools and churches have a events all the time open to the public and free of charge or sometimes they charge a small fee. This could be music, dance performances, theater, or other group activities or performances. Many colleges require students to do performances for their classes and these are often available for free. And having young kids start making noise in a free middle school performance is not as embarrassing as having them throw a fit at the symphony.
Another idea few people bother to do is organize in their own clinic around a sport or activity. For example, your child might like tennis but there are no tennis camps. If you can find a few other families interested in tennis then you can organize a weekly tennis get together and work on your skills. You don’t have to be a coach to develop basic skills and practice. This could be for any sport or other kinds of group activities. You could organize a Spanish club, hiking club, art club or a coding in group. And if you are organizing, this could actually make some money for you if you charge a small fee to the other participants.
But if you don’t want to organize events like this you can also depend on your local library to have many things that are free and open to the public and great to do as a family. I know locally you can go see movies at the library on certain nights as well as go to art classes, story time, and book groups. I’ve never seen any of these things cost any money.
Lastly a great way to get out and have some fun and not spend any money is to go on a nature walk or a hike. But to make it more interesting for kids consider making a treasure hunt. Decide what things you’re going to hunt for and mark them off the list or take pictures of them when you see them. They could be things like the bluebird or an acorn or are yellow car.
By making a treasure hunt it becomes far more interesting and it can even become competitive. This is not much different from the old travel bingo games people used to keep the kids entertained in the car before iPads and entertainment systems.
These are just some of the ideas you can do to get out and have fun and not spend any money while entertaining your kids getting exercise or developing a skill. It doesn’t matter where you live because things like this are going to be available in your area. These are just common things in most communities. The key is the call around and find out what’s going on and talk to people and find all these great things available to you. Now get out there and enjoy them.
