The 1st of Miss BB's expenses has been PAID

Hi

When we drew up our budget for 2012 we had an entire section dedicated to Miss BB and her expenses. These expenses are for her extra-curricular activities and some for her schooling. 

Miss BB does piano, gymnastics and girl guides as extra activities.  She enjoys all of them and I think that we have a good balance between something musical, a sporting activity and a group activity in the form of guiding.  We have been told that maybe these are costing us too much and we could be better off putting that money into the mortgage or our own retirement fund.  While it is true her expenses are a high percentage of our budget, we really feel that these activities are important and we are prepared to make some sacrifices for her to be able to participate.  We do acknowledge that we only have 1 child so even on our small budget we can get by and still provide her with these experiences. 

Having said that it is hard to have an invoice handed to you for 1 term of gymnastics totalling $250.  This does include our yearly levy for the club, the yearly insurance and rego for the governing body and it is a two hour a week lesson.  The next one wont be so high.

Next week Girl Guides and Piano lessons start again.  Girl guides is only $5 per 2 hour meeting but we do have to pay for any camps they go on.  Guides also has a yearly registration fee of about $100.  Piano is by far the most expensive at $25 per 30mins.  Next week is her first with a new teacher so I'm hoping that the rate doesn't increase.

As for school. Miss BB goes to a normal Queensland state school but we have found that even a free education is not exactly free.  There are excursions, free dress days(gold coin donation), school levies, swimming lessons and the cost of school books and uniforms.  Last year she did Viola lessons through the school and we had to pay for the hire of a viola, music book, the lessons(a group lesson) and shoulder rest.  Luckily she decided not to continue with it this year as we would have had to buy the viola this year.

So when were drawing up the budget is was decided that we would take the weekly amounts, add a little more for camps, music books, excursions and multiply them by 52 and then divide by 12.  By multiplying by 52 we will be sure of having enough in the budget to pay for all expenses even though they all stop for school holidays so they are not exactly a year round expense.

Mrs BB