Frugal Dad’s 14 Inexpensive Summer Activities for Kids

“I’m bored!”  It’s the two words every parents dread as school lets out for summer.  Fear not;I’ve put together two weeks worth of fun summer activities for kids to keep them busy, and their parents sane.

The list of summer activities ranges in cost from free to frugal, but each requires extra quality time with kids – something we can all afford to spend more on!

14 FUN, FRUGAL SUMMER ACTIVITIES FOR KIDS

Day 1. See a “one dollar” movie at the theater. Many theater chains around the country offer summer movie programs for kids where they offer a “one dollar” movie every day for a week, or on a particular day of the week all summer.Alternative: Have a movie day at home by streaming a classic from Netflix.

Day 2. Sprinkler day.  Delay your sprinklers for one day so they come a little later in the morning.  This way everyone can get on their bathing suits and have fun jumping through the sprinklers on a hot day.  But not for too long!  This is a good time to teach them about conserving water, reducing utility costs, etc.

Day 3. Attend “story time” at your local library.  My kids love to check out books on all kinds of subjects.  My son currently has three library books on swimming, pirates and going to the dentist (quite a diverse reader, huh?).  Many libraries also have a story time to encourage a summer reading program.  Stories are read out loud and the kids have a chance to interact with the story-teller and answer questions about the book.

Day 4. Set up a lemonade stand. This is probably my favorite idea because of the lessons in entrepreneurship involved.  Loan your kids $10 as “seed money” for supplies, or better yet, let them use their own money from savings.  This way they don’t get used to the idea that borrowing leads to prosperity.  Take the kids along to the grocery store one morning and let them pick up the lemons, sugar, cups, and a couple bags of ice to keep in a cooler.  Yes, Crystal Light lemonade works, too, but is less authentic and more expensive.  This is a great way for neighborhood kids to work together, as they can divide into teams to man the lemonade stand, make the lemonade, handle the money, etc.  Please remember that an adult needs to be with the kids at all times, both inside and outside the house, so have a neighbor help.

Bonus: Use the money your kids earn to open a Kids Savings Account at ING Direct, where they can begin to understand the mechanics of banking, compound interest, etc. while earning a decent return on their money.

Day 5. Teach your kids to fly a kite. Check your 10-day forecast and look for a windy day in the coming week.  Pick up an expensive kite for the kids.  I even recommend springing for the extra spool of kite string on a roller because the string and handles that come with the kites are lousy.

Day 6. Make homemade play-doh.  I haven’t run a cost analysis on this recipe to determine it’s “frugalness,” but I can tell you it is a lot of fun!  I suppose the next best option would be to pick up some commercial Play-Doh on sale, but what fun would that be?

Day 7. Bake a cake.  I remember having a ball helping my mom bake something when I was young.  And not all the fun came at the end when I got to lick the icing from the bowl!  Let your kids help bake a cake, and surprise mom or dad when they arrive home that afternoon.

Plenty of teachable moments here with opportunities to teach fractions (four 1/4 cups equals one cup, etc.).  By the way, my wife made this pirate birthday cake for my son’s birthday last week.  Arrrgghhh!

Day 8. Build a “fort” in the living room.  When my son was smaller he got the biggest kick out of playing in giant cardboard boxes.  We would color them, and cut “windows” out for him to look through.  A living room “fort” could be as simple as a few kitchen chairs gathered in a circle with a large bed sheet thrown across them and draped to the floor.  The kids can hide from mom and dad, read books, or pretend they are camping out in the living room.

Day 9. Go bowling. My grandfather and I spent many hot, summer afternoons bowling a couple games at the local bowling alley.  These days, bowling can be an expensive activity.  Call the lanes ahead of time and ask if they have any summer specials (certain days may be cheaper). Also check those coupon mailer packs for coupons for free games.  To keep costs down, just let the kids bowl – you can work on your game another time.

Day 10. Declare a “bored” game day. I learned to play chess, checkers, backgammon, and poker (my mom wasn’t thrilled with that) one summer while staying with my grandparents.  Few kids today don’t realize you can play games without a computer.  Most of these old board games are inexpensive in their basic form – skip the “deluxe” edition, and check out the board game selection at Amazon.com to save even more.

Day 11. Have a water balloon fight.  My son attended a birthday party recently and the parents had filled several dozen mini balloons with water.  The kids participated in games like a water balloon toss – they start close together, but take a step back with each toss to increase the distance.  The last one to break the balloon is out.  With that was left, the kids had an all-out water balloon battle.  Lots of fun, but be sure to pick up the balloon remains, especially if you have very little ones or pets as they could be a choking hazard.

Day 12.  Create a “mini-me.” Find a piece of large poster board, or large heavy-duty paper (such as a butcher paper) wide enough for your kids to lay down on.  Use a dull pencil (less chance for boo-boos) to trace their entire body to the paper from head to toe.  Now let the kids decorate the kids to look like themselves in the same clothes they are wearing, same color eyes, hair, etc. When they are finished, help them cut out their mini-me for proud display.

Day 13. Pajama day.  I feel like having these days as an adult!  Stay in your pajamas all day long.  Make pancakes in the morning, bake a pizza for lunch, and lounge around watching movies.  Use your Netflix subscription to have a couple kid-friendly movies on hand.

Day 14. Spend a day volunteering your time. A good way to wrap up your two-week blitz of summertime fun is to allow your kids to donate their time to a worthy cause.  Contact a few local charities and find out which ones will allow kids to volunteer some time over the summer (under your supervision).  My daughter has worked with Project Linus in the past – an organization that makes blankets for children who’ve suffered a traumatic experience.

Bonus tip: Get your kids to come up with their own shirt designs, then have a custom t-shirt printing service bring them to life. It’ll be a thrill for your kids to see their ideas put on clothing they can enjoy throughout the summer.

So there you have it; fourteen days of frugal summer fun!  I’d love to hear your ideas as well.

Photos courtesy of StormyDog, rochelle, et. al, Mrs. Frugal, daveparker, skennel

 

This entry was posted in Entertainment and tagged summer activities by Jason (Frugal Dad). Bookmark the permalink.

 

7 Springtime Home Spruces to Boost Buyer Interest

One of the first things many homebuyers look for are the unmistakable signs of something called ‘pride of ownership.’ As a whole, it’s a relatively intangible concept: there are just homes that have it – reeking of their owners’ love and meticulous care for the property — and homes that, well, don’t.

I’ve watched firsthand as buyers who like a cute home that is in generally good shape literally talk themselves into looking at a more homes once they start to notice one rickety gate, which snowballed into a nitpicky laundry list of little, tiny fixes the seller had left undone. The challenge is that between deciding whether and when to sell, staging, interviewing agents and determining a list price, it can be tempting for homeowners to fall into the trap of deferring maintenance on a home they might sell soon.

Whether you plan to put your home on the market next week or next year, here is a short list of  home maintenance items you should put on your Spring to-do list, stat, if you want to attract qualified buyers and let your home sweet-talk them into making a sweet offer:

1. Banish chips, scuffs and the like with a fresh coat of paint. I believe that eliminating nicks, scuffs and scratches on any painted or finished surface is one of the cheapest, easiest and most impactful spruces a seller-to-be can do.  That’s because these little tiny blemishes create a shabby appearance on a home that might otherwise be in great shape, but can be entirely banished with a good washing and some fresh paint.

This goes for interior and exterior walls, floors, and especially any sort of trims that are painted white, as is common with crown and floor moldings – scuff marks and blemishes seem to pop out from these items. Also, the edges of cupboards, doors and drawers are places where chips and nicks are so common that homeowners overlook them, but can be super visible to buyers who visit your home for the first time.

2. Brighten, polish and replace all trims.  One day, I’ll do a scientific study, and I predict the results will reveal that if you put two identical homes side-by-side and give one a set of tricked-out trims – exterior shutters, front door, eaves – even your house numbers, door knockers, kickplates and other exterior hardware – people will rate the house with the beautiful trims way higher on the ‘pride of ownership’ scale than you’d expect.

Go stand on your own curb to get the buyer’s-eye view of your home, and then drive around your own neighborhood or the nicest part of town and flip through some home improvement mags or websites for ideas.  If you can add attractive trims, freshen up the ones you have or paint them to create an unexpected but attractive color combination with the body of your house, you can skyrocket your home’s standing on my (newly invented) ‘pride of ownership’ scale.

3. Furry, drippy, noisy or broken HVAC systems. Maintaining your heating and air conditioning systems is not that expensive, but buyers think it is. In fact, your furnace  and AC are precisely the sort of major household machinery that intimidate first-time home buyers.  So, if they show up to the open house or a private showing of your home in June and the AC is making a funny knocking sound or just flat out doesn’t work well enough to keep the house cool, buyers might perceive that as a more serious red flag than it truly is.

Does your AC has that furry ‘science experiment’ look to it? Not only are you paying for the energy it’s probably wasting to push the air pass all that dust and dirt, the gross-out factor will have even the hardiest buyer wondering what else might be wrong with your home.

On the flip side, letting prospective buyers know that your home’s HVAC systems have been recently maintained or upgraded is a nice touch that makes itself obvious during showings and allows buyers to breathe a sigh of relief when it comes to concerns about short-term repair bills and the comfort level of family members who may have allergies and asthma.

Side note: if your AC does make a funny sound you might be so accustomed to you can’t hear it anymore – check in with your agent unless you know as a matter of fact that your AC is in tip-top shape. One more side note: if you live someplace where it gets cold around the holidays and you don’t plan to list your home until wintertime, right now may be the ideal time to have your heating system serviced. Off-season repairs and maintenance are often discounted.

4. Mend and tend to your fences, gates and screens. These items may not jump out at us in our own home – in fact, these are things I often see sellers skimp on or run out of time and money to tend to. And it’s easy to rationalize your way out of dealing with them, as they seem like relatively inexpensive fixes for buyers to make themselves.  But screens with holes in them and gates that don’t budge or hang off their hinges are precisely the sorts of things I’ve seen make buyers walk back through a home looking for other flaws; and anything to do with fences makes them envision neighbor disputes over bills.  You have the power to avoid sparking these concerns in the minds of house hunters by mending these items this Spring.

5. Doors, cupboards and drawers. One creaky door or squeaky cupboard does not kill a deal. But keep in mind that in some homes, other than the lights, these are the only functioning systems of your home that house hunting visitors will almost certainly use during the course of a viewing. Making sure your entry, interior closet and cupboard doors are in good cosmetic shape and that they work well and don’t stick is an easy, inexpensive way to position your home as a (literally) well-oiled machine.

One point of clarification – it’s less the case that buyers will notice, ooh and ahh over your smoothly sliding drawers than that they will notice and grow concerned if they don’t.

6. Have everything cleaned and washed. Even the most immaculate of housekeepers can realize a massive refresh to the look, feel, smell and the overall air quality of their homes by having professional cleaners come take a tour through the place. Springtime is a great time to ask your agent for referrals to the best local vendors to power wash your house, windows and driveway, as well as to have your carpets, rugs and window coverings cleaned. For those who are on a tight budget, many vendors offer Spring cleaning promotions for these services right about now (and if your budget is even tighter, there are products you can buy and machines you can rent to do these things yourself – just make sure you account for the value of your time).

7. Shred it up.  Some might say this is more like Spring cleaning than home maintenance, but I’ve noticed that the clutter of boxes and boxes of paperwork, old file cabinets and the like have a tendency to contribute to the sense that a listed property might be unkempt, the aura of  stagnation. If you have no cash to do anything else on this list, one thing you can do for free is to go through all your files and boxes, get rid of old papers and shred anything with sensitive information.

Just think – you’ll have to do it anyway when you move, so this is like giving yourself a head start and your attic, basement office or other rooms a fresh start. You can count it as a staging tactic as well, as it gives the rooms at issue some added visual white space, making them seem larger!

Buyers: What items that fall under simple home maintenance catch your eye when sellers have – or haven’t – addressed them?

Sellers: What else is on your spring home to-do list?

Buying a Foreclosure

Foreclosed and foreclosing properties dominate many of today’s U.S. real estate markets—more than four years after the sharpest observers saw the market shift coming, and more than two years after the reality hit home for millions of American home owners.

The recent Keller Williams Distressed Property Buying Survey unearthed great information about where the opportunities are, how big they are, and how smart, capable buyers are leveraging the current market.

First-time home buyers make up almost half of all buyers of bank-owned foreclosures and soon-to-be foreclosed short sale properties. They’re followed closely by investors seeking rental properties, and a third important group—homeowners who find they can move up to a bigger or better home they previously could not afford.

To help more consumers win as buyers, Keller Williams agents are now offering a workshop, “Winning with Foreclosures,” that shows buyers how to prepare to be successful buying the “distressed” properties—homes that offer, according to the survey, a 10 percent to 40 percent price advantage, depending on the local market.

The truth is: these markets demand most of the same things an ordinary market demands of buyers—only more intensely and pointedly:

• Money: Buyers must be financially qualified and ready to buy. The best properties go quickly. Buyers must look strong to lenders.

• Motivation: Buyers must be motivated to compete successfully. Keller Williams agents urge their buyers in this market to be clear about both their “motivating why” and their criteria for the property itself (size, location, condition, floor plan, etc.)

• Location: Contrary to the rumors, prime buying opportunities exist in almost every neighborhood and price range.

• Condition: Buyers should understand that repair costs are not necessarily large. The Keller Williams Distressed Property Buying Survey shows the average cost to repair to be $5,000—that’s less than 3 percent of the median purchase price in the U.S. today.

• Expert Help: Finally, smart buyers know they need to be even smarter—they become a team with a local expert agent who knows local property, pricing, lenders, and the best listing agents. A strong listing agent can be a critical advantage in seeing a distressed property through from contract to close.

So, bottom line—if you think you want to buy, have a talk with yourself first, check your financial readiness, and get with Karey Brown and learn everything you need to know, in order to get what you want in this market.

Getting the Best Value for Your Home- Pricing Your Home to Sell

Getting ready to get into the real-estate market?

Most sellers today are nervous and unsure. They wonder: is taking a loss on our house inevitable?

The answer is no! A strategic sales plan, coupled with a smart buy in your new location will ensure that you recoup the maximum value for your home.

Your Strategic Sales Plan

Consult with an expert, local real estate agent to ensure your house is priced competitively and well-staged. Why? Because while there are always three factors to getting a home sold—location, price, and condition—only two are under your control: price and condition. Of the two, which is more significant? Price. Remember that price will correct bad condition, but condition will never overcome a bad price.

Act fast. You’re in a race against time—the best price you’ll get in today’s market is the one you get now. If you wait, it will be lower. And every month the price on your home decreases, your costs remain the same. For example, Keller Williams research shows that sellers who listed their home at the price the agent originally recommended, sold the home 38 days faster. This is over a month of mortgage and tax payments! For a home that cost $200,000 at time of purchase, with 20 percent down and an interest rate of 6.5 percent, selling a month sooner results in a savings of $1101.31 for the mortgage alone, not including the taxes and insurance that the homeowner would be paying during this time.

Don’t worry about where the market has been, keep your focus on where it is going. The price your neighbor down the street got six months ago is not relevant in a market where your house is competing with others from all across town. Again, a local real estate agent will have the kind of long-term, wide-ranging data that will help you decide how to pinpoint your price with precision.

 Your Smart Buy

Move up. Whether you are moving to an area where prices are in a downturn, or dreaming of nicer, bigger, home in your own town, selling your house now can get you into the home of your dreams. Falling home prices are a great opportunity for a savvy homeowner looking to move up. Even though your house price may be lower, the smaller loss at sale can be made up by greater savings at purchase. For example, let’s take that same $200,000 home, and imagine that it has decreased in value by 5 percent, reducing the sales price to $190,000. At the same time, let’s imagine that you would like to move up and the $400,000 home you have been eyeing has also decreased by 5 percent. That’s a savings of $20,000, and it is a home that is likely to be better positioned for appreciation when the market rebounds.

Bottom line: don’t pit yourself against the market, work with the market to get the most out of your house sale.

I’ve been a real estate agent since 2002.  I’m among the Top 5% in my market.  My team is all about family. Veronica Fierro & Richard Brown are related by marriage.  I have two assistants. My assistant Kassy Housewright is a missionary in Louisiana and works for us virtually. My local assistant Deb Lindsay takes care of our marketing and administrative duties. Our focus is giving our clients excellent service, all while balancing our family.  We know that is what matters most to everyone.  I think our caring personalities and support are what has pushed us to the top percentage of our market. When everyone knows at least 2 agents, it’s important that you know an agent that does this for a living and not just a part-time gig. This is my job, full time, immersed in it every day. Nothing would make me happier then helping you!

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