Birthdays are always worth celebrating. How many birthdays take place in your household every year? What about in your extended family? What's the total if you include friends and other loved ones as well? That's a lot of celebrations and with celebrations comes a cost. It doesn't have to be a huge cost, as some of the best things in life are free. However, you are likely going to need some money for presents, food and drink and maybe even renting places for parties. Most of us don't have this kind of expendable income to spend throughout the year. With that in mind, let's have a look at how to create a family birthday fund for the year.
How Many Birthdays Will You Be Celebrating?
Firstly, you need to figure out how many birthdays you're likely to be celebrating during the year. Obviously this might change and you will make new friends and children might be invited to birthday parties from school buddies. However you can generally get an estimated figure. Work out the people in your family, your extended family and those friends you'll likely send a gift to during the year. This gives you a fairly basic number of how many birthdays you'll be celebrating and hence how many presents you're likely to buy.
Think about what you do with those different people. Some nephews and nieces you might simply send a present to. Your own children will need a party organising, which is extra cost on top of gifts. Some friends you might just go to the pub with. As well as figuring out how many celebrations, think about what you usually do to celebrate. This will help you to figure out how much money you will need to save into your birthday fund.
How Much Will You Need?
If you have your own children, you might think that £100 for their birthday is enough. This might include gifts, decorations, the hire of a hall. Perhaps some takeaway pizza for a film night at home with their friends. For husbands, wives or partners, you might set a budget to spend on one another, maybe £50. A household with 3 children and two parents, you're already at £500.
You might then have extended family, on whom you usually spend £10 or £20 for their birthday gift. Think about how much you'd like to spend on gifts for school birthday parties, you can't really send your child empty handed. If you see some great gifts on offer, ideal for kids birthday parties, buy a handful to put away for when your kids get invited. The gifts will look more expensive than you paid, saving you money! When you set up a birthday fund, you can find ways to save money on what you'll actually spend as well. You might have the money there, budgeted, but you don't necessarily have to spend the entire amount.
Stick To Your Budget
It can be easy to get carried away with spending on birthdays, but when you set up a birthday fund, you need it to help fund every birthday party and present throughout the year. Just because there is cash in that fund, it doesn't mean you shouldn't stick to your budget. If you have budgeted £15 for Grandparent's gifts, stick to it. Don't forget that spending lots of money doesn't mean it's going to be a better present. A photo frame with a picture of your kids in is going to be much more precious to Grandparents than something you've spent a lot of money on.
As well as spending money, you need to spend time and effort into your gift giving. Just because you found something on offer, it doesn't mean it's not worth the full value. The recipient won't know how much you've spent, but they will see the gift. If it's perfect for them or something they really wanted, it doesn't matter if it cost the full amount that you budgeted, or less. Just make sure it doesn't cost more or else your birthday fund will be depleted for other occasions.
Keep Adding To The Pot
Birthdays happen every year. It's an annual occurrence to celebrate family birthdays. Of course, the amount you might need each year might change. View your birthday fund as a sinking fund that you keep adding to. Kids might get invited to less parties this year than last. Your friends might be away for their birthday so you don't need to go to the pub and buy drinks. You might need to prepared to add a little extra if your child suddenly gets a bunch of invitations you didn't think they would. You could cover this with a contingency. So once you've figured out how much you think you'll need, add a little extra, just in case.
Milestone birthdays are generally celebrated with extra style and substance. This might mean extra cost. Whilst you can continue to feed the birthday fund throughout the year and every year, you might need to change how much you're putting in depending on various factors. If you and your partner are both turning 50 this year, and your eldest is turning 21 and the youngest is turning 18, that's a lot of milestone birthdays! This might mean extra cash is needed. Plan ahead and you'll be able to ensure it's in the birthday fund when you need it.
Go Automatic
When you view your birthday fund as something you need to continue to pay into, to cover forthcoming celebrations, you'll keep adding to it. Use automatic payments to make it easier. You could even take the amount that you think you'll need every year, divide it by 52 and set up standing orders to transfer your cash over into a separate savings account every week. It's much easier to move £15 a week than figure out how to get your hands on £780 a year! It feels much more manageable and you might not even notice it moving from one account to the birthday fund every week.
Putting a birthday fund into place makes it so much easier to celebrate and have a fab day, rather than stress. When you are searching around at the last minute for cash it can impact how much you can actually enjoying the occasion. Saving money into a birthday fund throughout the year will ensure it is there when you need it. You can have you cake and eat it! Freeing up your thoughts so you can enjoy making those birthday memories and celebrating with your loved ones on the day.