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[Anonymous]

Give us some ideas on how to make family life fun without spending money.  What do you do to spend time together?  We played a lot of board games and did puzzles, but I know there are some really creative things to be done to build family relationships.

One thing we did the whole time our son was growing up was to have Family Night.  Every Friday we had popcorn and a movie.  Sometimes taped during the week, sometimes borrowed from the library or a friend, and maybe once a year rented from the store.  Our son is now 27 and we still have popcorn and a movie on Friday night, even though he’s been gone since he was 19.  All our friends know what we do on Friday nights.

It’s fun to make traditions … puts some stability in life … even though I don’t like routine, I enjoy the good feeling of traditions.

Donna

[Anonymous]

We spend a lot of time outdoors. We live in WI and take advantage of all the state parks in our area. For $26 a year we can take numerous hiking trips, learn about nature, and see awesome waterfalls and other cool things. In the winter we go to those same parks for CC-skiing.

There are a lot of neat low-priced and free things sponsored by different levels of government. My tax dollars are supporting them so I take advantage of that!

[Anonymous]

Well… this technically isn’t frugal, but it’s free to us!  We live near Branson; so when my dad asked what we wanted for Christmas, we requested Silver Dollar City season passes.  We’ve already used them 3 or 4 times this year for our family, plus utilized the free one-day passes that came with them (for ordering early) to take friends.  We will probably end up using them at least 10 times this year, and we really have a lot of family fun there.  You just CANNOT give in to the awful, ridiculous priced concessions and vendors!  We stick a picnic and frozen water bottles in the bottom of the stroller.

If you live near Stone Mountain, Dollywood, or the like, it wouldn’t hurt to put in a similiar Christmas request.  Even if we had splurged on the tickets ourselves… as often as we go, it would have averaged less than $20 a trip for our whole family of 5.

[Anonymous]

One new found activity that my 7 year old and I enjoy –
is combing the thrift stores for clothes items that can be
turned into quilts or covers. She cuts the items into “pieces”. Since it will be a true crazy quilt, the size and shape doesn’t really matter. We don’t know how to quilt, so making mistakes is perfectly fine since we can take the who cares approach. She’s learning to sew and launder, and we have quality time together. Maybe she’ll end up with some priceless throw, albeit sentimental only,
to share with her kids. In the end, we’ve spent little, had alot of fun and came away with a useful item.

[Author]

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