Staying home for the summer holidays - what’s a reasonable budget for the 6 weeks?

[MexicanDaisy]

DC are 8 and 11. We will do a mix of day trips, parks, family visits etc and stay at home of course. Wondering whats a reasonable budget to cover activities and associated costs over the 6 weeks.

Honestly? With kids that age I'd probably have taken them out for a day trip a couple of times, and the rest of the time I'd be expecting them to play at home, with friends or just take a picnic to the park/beach (we are at the sea).

I wouldn't be spending a lot of money, unless it's of no consequence to you. Kids can and should be able to entertain themselves mostly without you needing to throw money at the problem.

It all depends on what you plan to do. Are you going to a cinema a couple of times? Our summer holidays were definitely play dates, tennis in the park, cycle rides, visits to free museums.Keep costs down by having ice cream in the freezer and taking picnics when you go out. Do some cooking with them - they can make pizzas for example or their own sandwiches for lunch.

That's dependant on your own wider budgets. I'd say £100 a week depending on your definition of day trip. It's easy to spend £100 on one day out but equally easy to spend next to nothing.

It's a 'how long is a piece of string' question because it depends entirely on your budget.

A reasonable budget is what you can reasonably afford. Look at monthly spending and what you have leftover for 'fun' each month. I'd be spending maybe 75% of that on keeping the kids entertained. Unless you have a massive budget and 75% of your 'fun' budget is a ridiculous amount and you don't want to spoil them! Or if 75% of your fun budget is tiny, I'd probably up it a little bit to 80-90% and suck-up the loss of my own activities.

I guess my thoughts are skewed by lots of families going away / abroad so I am left thinking I need to make up for not doing that. (we did go on a family hol in May though)