A Big, Frugal Birthday Party

My daughter turned three this past week, making this her third birthday party. Each year we’ve had a big family party, which would be the frugal option for most people, but not for us. Much of our family lives 2-3 hours from here so I also serve lunch at her party. We usually have around 20 people attend and only 3 of them are kids. Our family is important to us so cutting our guest list isn’t an option. Instead, we have to be creative with our budget and planning.

We have to balance keeping things easy with keeping them frugal because one of the costs of living a frugal lifestyle is that there is often more work involved. So, in favor of keeping my sanity AND my budget here’s what we did.

To keep things easy …

• We grill out, which saves pots and pans and the oven running.
• We use disposable products (plates, napkins, cups, utensils), which we generally try to avoid for environmental reasons, but I make an exception here.

To keep things inexpensive …

• I make the cake.
• We make lemonade (or punch) and coffee instead of buying sodas (no alcohol either).
• I make all the props for our games (more on this soon).
• We have the party at our house instead of renting a place.

Today I’m going to give you an overview of some tips I use to have a big, frugal birthday party.

1. Plan Ahead. Most things can be affordable with enough planning. If I decided on Wednesday to have a party on Saturday I would end up spending MUCH more money than if I had been working on it for a month (which is what I do). I send out invitations and I confirm who will be attending so I have a good idea of how many people to plan on. I plan the menu and the activities also, so nothing is a surprise (unless, of course, your grill runs out of propane like ours did last year ).
2. Count ALL The Costs. If you only budget money to purchase a birthday gift then you will be in trouble when it comes time to pay for everything else. Think of the cost of: food, drinks, paper products and utensils, decorations, party favors, games, cake, ice cream, house guests, etc. It really adds up.
3. Buy Ahead. There were several things that I purchased way ahead of time. Whenever I saw something on sale that I thought I would need I’d pick it up. A few dollars here and there isn’t as big of a hit as purchasing it all at once. For her party we usually grill hamburgers and hot dogs. Every time I saw hot dogs and ground beef on sale I picked up a little extra so that by the time the party rolled around I had plenty stored up in my freezer. I was able to absorb that cost into my weekly grocery budget. I also did this with party supplies; I purchased them when I saw them on sale.
4. Make Things Yourself. Make the cake. Make the food. Make the games. Whatever you can do yourself, as opposed to purchasing pre-made, will generally save you a good amount of money. Cake is VERY inexpensive to make yourself in comparison to spending $15-20 on one at the last minute.
5. Enlist Help. My mother offered to help so I took her up on it. She made a salad to go with our meal. She also let me use her house (which is much bigger than mine) for the party.

When it comes down to it, not everything that’s frugal has to be minimal. You can do big things on a tight budget too. You just have to be willing to plan for it.

Why I do what I do ~ How do I rate on the emotional mom scale? I don’t know, ummm, I nearly cried real tears when we belted out “Happy Birthday Dear Chloe …” What do you think?Have you liked Domestic Cents on Facebook yet?

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Tagged as: Birthdays