As child care and college costs rise, most parents would say it’s hard enough affording care or tuition for one kid. Families with twins, triplets or other multiples have an even bigger bill to consider, but with careful planning and a little creativity, they make it work.
[See: 12 Habits of Phenomenally Frugal Families.]
Twenty-two years ago, when Joe Saul-Sehy, creator and co-host of the Stacking Benjamins podcast, found out his wife was expecting twins, he was starting a financial planning practice and his wife was a student. “We had no money, but man did we have fun,” says the Texarkana, Texas, father of two. As the twins grew, Saul-Sehy borrowed a leaky tent from his father-in-law and the family discovered a love for camping.
U.S. News asked Saul-Sehy and other parents of twins for their family budget secrets. Even if you’re not raising multiple kids, these strategies could help save your family money. Read on to learn top tips and tricks for trimming costs on everything from clothes to extracurricular activities to college from seasoned savers.
Seek out creative child care arrangements. Child care is a major expense, especially for families with multiples. “When you’re a young family and you have two kids at once, everything is more expensive,” says Catherine Alford, a Detroit-based mom and founder of the family finance blog CatherineAlford.com. She found that it was less expensive to hire a part-time helper to come to their home for 25 hours a week than to enroll her 3-year-old twins in day care. Alford also joined an upscale local gym that costs around $200 per month and offers free child care for up to two and a half hours a day, so she uses that time to work on her laptop. “I just sit in the cafe and that is the most affordable child care around,” she says. “They’re not stuck in a tiny room,” she adds.
Saul-Sehy and his wife originally enrolled their kids in a day care that offered a sibling discount, but later moved them to a different day care after noticing some safety concerns. “I also set up my [financial planning] practice to work nontraditional hours so we could minimize the amount of day care,” he adds. He’d get the kids ready and her wife would pick up them, as he continued to work.
Find free and fun family activities. Tickets for movies, amusement parks and flights add up for families of twins or triplets, so many have developed a sixth sense for discovering free and cheap entertainment. Saul-Sehy and his family went camping and enjoyed free days at their local zoo. Christina Lukac, a New Jersey mom of twins that are 2 1/2 years old and a 7-year-old, used money her kids got as a gift to buy them a membership to the local aquarium. “One little investment turns into repeat visits with a gift like that,” she says.
Lukac also uses free museum passes from her local library and has taught her boys to enjoy playing on coin-operated, motorized cars without inserting any money. “They’re perfectly happy just playing in the car,” she says. “It’s saved me a lot of money over the years. They can bounce from car to car and pretend they’re driving,” she adds.
[Read: The Truth About the Cost of Kids.]
Select after-school activities carefully. The cost of sports equipment, music classes, French lessons and other after-school activities can add up quickly, so Saul-Sehy’s kids chose low-cost sports such as swimming and track instead of ice hockey and football. “We belonged to the YMCA versus the upscale private club,” he adds.
As her son and daughter get older, Alford plans on enrolling them both in one exercise activity at a time and one arts activity so they’re not overextended. “We want to try to understand them and what they might like and focus on the one thing,” she says, adding that she’s heard colleges want applicants who excel at something, rather than being merely proficient in several areas.
Embrace hand-me-downs. Twins or triplets can’t wear hand-me-down clothes from each other, but they can use clothing previously worn by an older sibling or cousin. Lukac’s twins share hand-me-downs from their 7-year-old brother. Plus, Lukac’s husband’s cousin has twin boys, and his cousin has passed on some of his children’s outgrown clothes. Lukac also buys clothing at a consignment pop-up shop that occurs a few times a year in her community. She sells her twins’ outgrown clothing and uses that money to buy a larger size. She’s also part of an online Moms of Multiples group, where she can buy used items from other members at meetings. Many Moms of Multiples groups for different geographic areas exist on Facebook and the platform Meetup, providing a way for parents of multiples to connect with others in their area, share resources and buy or sell items .
Consider 529 plans for college. Having multiple kids in college at the same time can lower the expected family contribution for the sake of financial aid eligibility. However, some high-income families may make too much money to qualify for need-based financial aid, but not enough to comfortably cover tuition and other college costs without meticulous planning.
Saul-Sehy set up his kids with 529 college savings plans in two different states for the sake of diversification. In the event that one state’s plan did not perform well, both kids wouldn’t be invested in the same plan. “We never know what’s going to happen in the future,” he says. “With 529 plans it’s fairly easy to change beneficiaries.”
[Read: The Ultimate Guide to Understanding 529 College Savings Plans.]
The family also enrolled in Upromise, an online shopping portal where users earn cash back for college. The money can be transferred into a 529 account. By the time the kids were buying college textbooks, Saul-Sehy said they’d accumulated around $650 in points.
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5 Budgeting Hacks From Parents of Multiples originally appeared on usnews.com
