Frugality As A Parenting Hack
Lots of smart and well meaning people struggle with frugality when it comes to their kids. They may be willing to forgo the designer suede boots they’ve been drooling over, but their kids have lots of forgotten Nikes under the bed. I have friends who would be happy to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches after their kids’ soccer games, but all the other kids are getting McDonald’s and they don’t want their kid to miss out. Vacations to Disney World, new iPhones, video games, after school tutors, private lessons– it all adds up!
Lots of these items and experiences are good. I’ve happily paid for new Apple products, summer camp tuition, horse riding lessons… I don’t want my kids to look back and think I deprived them of important life experiences because I was too cheap.
But I truly believe that the biggest gifts I can give my children don’t come from stores. They’re not even WOW life experiences, like Taylor Swift tickets (Kid Sense can dream on).
So which choices that we make as parents really do have an outsized impact on our kids?
I would argue that providing a positive example of marriage is one of the greatest gifts we can give our children. My husband and I were both fortunate to grow up with parents who remain happily married to each other today. In my whole life, I’ve seen my parents argue once, for about ten seconds. When Mr. Sense and I began talking about getting married, we wanted to model that same kind of mutual respect and commitment for any of our potential children. As foster and adoptive parents, this takes on even more importance, as many kids we’ve met have seen adults handle disagreements and frustrations in unhealthy ways. If we do nothing else right as parents, we want to demonstrate what a loving and committed partnership looks like.
Fortunately, this costs very little! We zhuzh it up with some lunch dates, but we could do it for free if needed.
We also aim to be aware of and responsive to our kids’ unique needs. Our frugality actually helps with this. Because we’re happy with a slightly less expensive lifestyle, Mr. Sense is able to be a stay at home parent. That meant that when Kid Sense was struggling in public school, we were able to homeschool her for her final two years of high school. My husband and I, along with my wonderful parents, took turns working with Kid Sense one on one, most of each school day. Hours and hours of chemistry and SAT prep, tailored to one student’s strengths and weaknesses. Our kiddo had a positive attitude and worked hard, and the end result was a tremendous success. I’m proud to say our daughter is excelling as a college freshman at James Madison University now, where she’s studying to be a social worker. She dreams of improving the foster care system for kids who come after her, and I’m confident she has the drive and compassion to make it happen.
These days, we have an eight year old in the house, and Mr. Sense is able to be there for him after school each day. They take lots of trips to the park and the library. In the evenings, we all read books and take walks together (our kid usually bikes or scooters ahead of us).
Our kids may think we’re a little weird for reusing plastic baggies and making an art form of reinventing leftovers, but we think the extra time with them is worth more than buying them more stuff.
One very cool side effect of not tying all treats to spending money is that our kids get very excited when we mix it up a little. Earlier this year, we took two very shocked teenagers to McDonald’s for dinner. They were thrilled and we all had a fun evening out. But if we made a habit of swinging through the drive thru after every busy day when we didn’t feel like cooking, it would quickly become expected and boring. Soon there would be griping about which fast food joint everyone wanted or why someone’s milkshake was the wrong flavor.
Mr. Sense and I have a clear picture of our dreams for our kids. We hope they grow in the wisdom and knowledge of Jesus and that they live lives glorifying God. We want them to feel loved and safe in our home when they’re younger, and we want to watch them blossom into independent and caring adults, steeped in values like integrity and compassion. We feel so blessed that these goals seem to fit in so well with our other goals, including our long term project working towards financial independence.
