Top tips for planning the school holidays

19 Jun

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(Transcribed)

The Easter holidays are upon us for all parents with school-age children. My boys have two weeks and they're spending one week with me, one week with their dad, and this is how I have gone about confirming our agenda, our seven-day agenda, from Friday the 4th of April to Friday the 11th of April. For context, my boys are 8 and 11 years old, so they're pretty vocal, they know what they like, they kind of know what they want to do.

They're not always aware of the budget that I have to work with, so I'm going to walk you through how I do it and how I do it in about half an hour, I would say. Yeah, it took me about half an hour.

So, step one is, if your children are old enough, do get their thoughts on what they would like to do in the break.

My boys would be like, go to Dubai, go to Ibiza, which is what we were meant to do before I thought it would be a clever idea to buy my first property. So now, any holiday idea has been canned and I had to re-ask them, no, what do you want to do seriously? Who would you like to see? That's a good way to start, it gets them thinking less about money and more about, yeah, their friends and who they want to see. So they gave me a list of people, oh, I really want to see this person, I really want to see that person, and I made a note of that in my mind, weeded out anyone that I didn't think was appropriate or perhaps I didn't really want to spend time with them, no shade, but equally, my mental health is important too.

So, started with that, made a mental note, I then have seen things, you know, as it is when you're a parent, you see things, whether it's an advert for something, a holiday camp or what have you, a little activity at your local something, and I always take pictures of that, so I had that in my reserves.

So, one, ask the kids, two, see what I've screenshotted, three, and probably this should be first, I had a budget in mind for what I'm happy to spend, and four, I always try and book some holiday camp days just to give me a break because I've got work and all of that jazz and I just need to sit in silence sometimes. So, I put it all together and worked out how much camp I can afford, how many of those, oh, these are nice to do things I can afford, and how many friends that I could fit in to the other empty days.

And I'll show you what the end result is and I will try and make a template or something available on my site ASAP so that you could download it and have a checklist too. And finally, good luck, good luck to all parents with the holidays coming up, good luck to everyone that isn't traveling, good luck to everyone that has to work as well, and good luck to anyone that is solo parenting. We are the G's, yeah? I'm very blessed though, I'm so happy that I just have to get through one week and then I have one week off.

Enlist a village, if that is not how it is for you and you are fully solo parenting with no help whatsoever, as in like no co-parent help, then definitely enlist a village, don't think you have to be a hero, and outsource the kids to everyone in your village. A few hours here, a day there, trust me, don't be a hero. And if you're wondering why I've got post-it notes, this is actually, this is the plan of no relevance to you on a post-it note, but I, now that the plan is confirmed, I've also written down a budget for each day and the overall total, and I'm going to show this to my boys because they are at an age where I need them to be very mindful and aware of how much things cost, because in my former life, which was a nine to five hour in a very cushy role, you know, earning a decent amount, um, I wouldn't say money was no object, definitely wasn't like that, but I definitely, they had everything that they asked for, and now that the levels have changed a bit, I need them to, and they are growing, and they are older, I need them to understand the money behind activities.

Good luck guys.