Frugal Families

Am I the only one who is repeatedly blindsided by school expenses?  My kids go to public school, so thankfully there is no tuition or fees, and I can control what I buy for their wardrobe.

What about:

PTA dues

School fundraisers

Equipment for extra curricular activities (my dd needs $22 for band shoes and another $20 for the gloves!?)

Gym clothes

I know some schools have to rent instruments

etc, etc.

What "extras" do you have to include, and do you keep a separate fund for them?

I thought the September crunch would end when my husband went from a 10 month salary as a teacher to a 12 month salary as an administrator.  It just hasn't happened.

I don't "budget" per se, that all comes from money I stick into savings.  I'm on the PTC so I am all over the membership drive LOL...it's only $5 in our school. (But we're not a part of a national organization, hence the "C" which is for Council, so that we can keep all of the membership money in our school for our kids.)

Our fundraiser starts tomorrow and I really don't like fundraisers.  At. All.  However, they're a necessary evil and so I am dealing. (Well, ok, and organizing the darn thing, which I am not sure how happened LOL, but at least I have put the kobosh on cookie dough!)  I'm going to make DH take the flyer to work and bully his buds into buying crap they don't need.  Actually, we picked a decent enough "crap in a book" catalog, so I can Christmas shop from it too.

School fees were $50 for both kids, which annoys me for public schools.  My kids are small enough (K and 2nd) that there's no extracurricular school-related activities (they're in dance and football respectively, but that's out of school entirely and a total "extra" that could go.)

So I am going to stick with the pulling it out of savings plan.  Oh, except the fundraiser, and that I just buy what I need or could use for gifts using cash in the envelopes.  So the grocery budget might get raided a bit, or gifts, or whatever...but I don't pull extra out for that. 

There's  always something, isn't there?

:)

Band band and more band. There's the $500 band fee, plus the $1000 sponsorship that my law firm gives (now then, we get awesome publicity off of it--a banner on the football field, our sponsorship announced before all of the football games, a banner in the gym for al lthe concerts, an ad in the band newsletter, etc). The $500 is due in August, the sponsorship we pay monthly. Baby brother's band shoes thankfully still fit, and he knows I will KILL him if he loses his freakin' gloves (those things were bought his freshman year). His trombone was bought years ago. Though $22 sounds good for band shoes! I think they were closer to $40 for BB.

As for supplies, I stock up at the penny sales like a mad woman. Anything the kid wants fancy, he buys himself. Or if he fails to warn me (since I asked him like, 15 times if he needed binders while they were a quarter each!) he buys it himself. Gr.

We've never joined the PTA, actually. Partly because I get enough weird looks when I go to the school (one band mom took my head off about how "you teenage moms shouldn't be allowed in the same school as the good girls" when I took the baby in with me to pick up my brother).

Gym clothes are just plain athletic clothes; his school doesn't require anything in particular other than t-shirts, elastic shorts, and tennis shoes. We don't do the whole "school clothes" thing...clothes get bought as needed.

It doesn't usually hurt us too much because we put some back throughout the year--we have a good idea of what the expenses are and just divide them up monthly. The fundraisers get old, since if they don't sell the minimum, we're supposed to make up for it with a contribution, but the kid knows that that comes straight out of his pocket money, so he's a pretty motivated seller. We buy one item from each fundraiser, he has to sell the rest.

~Didi

Wife to Ron, Mommy to Will




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