Best Summer Ever - Trying to live free

Best Summer Ever - Trying to live free

At least that is what my kids say when they talk about when dad had no money and we had to do everything on the cheap. I remember being a little nervous when that summer was coming up. It was about 10 years ago or so. I remember thinking what am I going to do with my kids when they come to visit? How am I going to pay for things that they want to do? 

The answer to that last question was I wasn't going to pay for much. But we were going to try to have a great summer. 

First thing I had to do was figure out what free things I can do. Thank god for the internet. I spent a lot of time looking up free things to do in my area. I was surprised to find out that there was tons of things to do. You have to know that when I was married, I didn't do any planning of anything. So this was all new to me. Before I go into all the things I used to do with them I did always run into a problem. 

What was I going to feed them at my house and what was I going to feed them while we were out. We were an eating out family. We still are. As a family now we spend a lot of time out to eat. I came up with a solution that if we were going anywhere outdoors, I would do a picnic thing. My kids at the time were young and that wouldn't be embarrassing to them. So I would make sandwiches, chips and drinks and put them in a back pack with a blanket and when we were outside, find a spot and have a picnic. They loved it and it cost less than ten bucks to get it all. 

The other thing I would think about was going somewhere and having to pay for parking. Most places I wanted to take them parking was 10-20 dollars. I couldn't do that. So what was I going to do? I looking into public transportation. I haven't been on public transportation since I was a kid so I didn't know how much it cost. I found out that on weekends, the kids were young enough that they were free and the train had a weekend pass for $7. The buses were only a couple of dollars for me so I saved a ton of money that way. The kids were always excited to go on the train and buses. They never rode public transportation before I started taking them. It was great!

Only one other thing I had to think of was what we were going to have for dinner. I had to think cheap and something we could all eat and like. I decided on spaghetti. Easy. Every Saturday for almost 10 years we had spaghetti. Everyone who came over knew it and it became our thing. To get spaghetti, sauce and garlic bread cost about $8. That was great. 

So then it came on what to do. I live not too far from a big city so I found that there were tons of things to do. Here is a list of some of the places I took the kids.

• Park. Easy one. There is always one close to the house.
• The beach. Some are free and some are not. Just have to find the free ones.
• Zoo. In our area we had 2 zoo's. One was free and one was not. The free one is pretty nice and we still go there today.
• Downtown. You can always find something to do downtown. Even if you just walk around and look at all the neat buildings and just go site seeing.
• The mall. We spent a lot of time at the mall. We wouldn't spend any money there but they loved it. We have a Bass Pro Shop there and we used to go and hang out on the boats and pretended that we were out to sea.
• In the winter we would just go sledding or just play in the snow. They have a bunch of places we could go to for free.
• The pool. I was lucky enough to have a pool in my apartment complex. They loved that and they thought it was fancy that it was an indoor pool. Even though it wasn't.
• Going hiking or running in the forest preserves. 

There were many more places I took the kids during the summer but these were the popular ones. Every time one of my kids go on a bus or train they mention about the summers we spent doing things. It really makes me happy that happened because it could have easily gone the other way and it could have been terrible. I am so glad it turned out that way.

That is really when I started thinking about trying to live free. Every time I do something with them or even without I try to think of things to do that don't cost anything. I still do most if not all of these things today either with the kids or just with my wife. 

Hopefully I helped you think of things to do if you are trying to live free.

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