The Cost Of Summer Holidays With Post Office Money #Ad

The summer holidays are nearly upon us. This is a mind boggling six plus weeks of entertaining your children day after day for six weeks. It’s hard and it’s even harder when you are trying to not to spend too much money.

Well, this summer I have been challenged by Post Office Money to share my budget boredom buster, which will hopefully reduce the cost of summer in our home.

My six year old twin girls are big fans of Ninja Warrior UK, and ok yes, I love it too! When the show is on, we let the girls stay up later than normal to watch the whole show on a Saturday night.

The three of us sit on the sofa totally engrossed for an hour. It really is a wonderful bonding time between twin daughters and dad.

Inspired by this, we thought we would re-create our very own Ninja Warrior course in our back garden, but obviously it’d be a very child friendly version. Nothing too dangerous, but also a little bit challenging for the girls.

To create a Ninja Warrior course in our garden all I used was what we already had in the garden plus I used a few items from the garage. To start out with I used pasting tables as the steps, then the girls had to weave in between inflatable skittles, over a climbing frame which had a pool of water underneath it. If they touch the water they’re out!

Next up was to cross a plank of wood whilst keeping low under a bar.

Then on to the swings and they had to transfer from one swing to another. If they fall off they will be in the water!

Finally through tunnels and along a tightrope or plank of wood. To finally reach our interpretation of the wall, a slide turned around the wrong way and onto the trampoline to press the buzzer or in our case an inflatable skittle!

As I have said this cost nothing to set up and took me about 30 minutes to put together. The girls had hours of fun playing and trying to replicate the Ninja Warriors they see on TV every week. It was simple fun and a total blast, and gave us loads of laughs. Even daddy had a go!

Post Office Money have carried out research to find out the real cost of entertaining your children during the summer holidays. Some of the findings really are staggering.

• Since last year the cost of entertaining kids has risen 25%. Why is that? Well it’s because parents are splashing out to beat the heat this year

• The average cost of entertaining children during summer is £316, but only just over half of parents, 55%, think they have saved enough, but in-fact are only saving 53% of the cost

• A quarter of parents will put their normal saving habits to one side, so they can entertain their children during the summer holidays

• One in four parents (25%) will put their saving habits on hold to entertain children over the summer

• Finally the last piece of research by the Post Office, and this I have to say totally shocked me. Parents across the UK are expecting to spend £7.8 billion, yes, you read that right! Billion! It’s a serious amount of money entertaining their children which works out at an average of £584 per parent.

This research really has made me more determined to think before I spend just to entertain my children. It’s made me think outside the box and think more creatively about what can we do that doesn’t cost anything. The kids will love something they have been involved in making, just like our Ninja Warrior course and then play on it for hours!

I would love to hear what ideas you have to reduce the cost of summer spending when it comes to entertaining your kids.

Check out the Post Office Budget Boredom Busters Facebook Page.

You can also see the video of my six year old twin girls and myself become Ninja Warriors in the back garden. Here

Disclosure: This post was produced in collaboration with Post Office Money. All thoughts and opinions are 100% mine.