How One Mom is Taking Back Control From Expensive Kids’ Birthday Parties

April 30, 2009 - PRLog -- Merrimack, NH - As a mother of 6, Wendy Thomas has given her share of birthday parties. Over the years she has seen the disturbing trend of Kids’ parties getting more and more expensive with standard gifts being outrageous 25 dollar gift certificates from department stores.

Wendy has finally just said no to this party insanity.

When she agreed to let her 9 year old daughter have a birthday party, it came with the stipulation that a letter to the invitees’ parents was included in the invitation. In the letter, Wendy explained how she planned to have a fun birthday party for her daughter and her friends on a budget of 10 dollars. The plan was to take the kids to a local library for a free movie and then return to the house for homemade cake, ice-cream and crafts.

She also asked for the parents help by having them send gifts which cost 5 dollars or less. Some suggestions included:

•   A big bag of lollypops
•   5 dollars to be used only for dollar video rentals
•   A 5 dollar fast food card
•   A 5 dollar gift certificate to the dollar store
•   A coupon for a play date or a sleepover

Other suggestions included going to a thrift store and getting the birthday girl a piece of clothing or if they had an older girl in your house, send over some outgrown clothing, or an extra beach towel, or an unused toy.

There would be no expensive bouncy house, bowling, or arcade type parties for Wendy.
It’s time for parents to take back control from outrageously expensive parties and Wendy is starting by just saying no.

The result is that she held a 3 hour children’s party complete with a trip to the movies, cake, ice cream, treats, and a craft for a grand total of $3.19.

http://simplethrift.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/a-birthday-p...

Wendy writes the weekly Simple Thrift column for the Nashua Telegraph. In it she covers thrifty tips for today’s times. She is also the Manchester Frugal Families Examiner on examiner.com

Additional money saving information like:
•   feeding her family of 8 for fewer than 140 dollars a week,
•   home remedies that work – and aren’t gross
•   keeping the kids entertained on a shoestring
•   the great Hamburger Experiment –where Wendy is finding out how many meals she can make out of 50 pounds of ground beef

can be found at her Simple Thrift blog www.simplethrift.wordpress.com . Wendy also tweets daily thrifty tips on her twitter account: SimpleThrift.  

Wendy writes about life experiments and has written for many local newspapers and magazines in New Hampshire. She has written a series on decluttering where over the course of 16 months she decluttered her entire house removing over 5,000 pounds of unwanted stuff. She has also written a series called Thrifty Times that covered money saving tips and stories.

Media: contact author for interviews or comments at wethomas@gmail.com or 603/424-1379

# # #

Wendy Thomas is a journalist and the author of Simple Thrift, a blog at (www.simplethrift.wordpress.com), Simple Thrift column at The Nashua telegraph (www.nashuatelegraph.com) and the Manchester Frugal Families Examiner (examiner.com/Manchester) .