I’ve Got the (Free) Cure For the Summertime Blues
A week after school let out, my son emerged from his room just after 11:30am, immediately laid on the living room floor and and claimed complete boredom of summer vacation.
That didn’t take long.
Our teenage son had fallen into a routine of staying up late playing the same online video game with his friends, sleeping in late, and then waking up to do it all over again. We needed to give him something to look forward to that would break up the monotony of a summer routine.
Coincidentally, we received two mailings that very day that provided some relief for our dilemma.
Free Video Rentals
A post card from Family Video advertised a free movie or game rental for each ‘A’ on a student’s report card. My son did very well academically this year and walked out of the store with a fistful of free rentals. He used these rentals to try out some new games, and to have movie nights with his friends. Unfortunately, all free rentals had to be used by June 30th, so this freebee is over for this summer. They’ve done this the last few years, so we look forward to taking advantage of this again next year.
Free Bowling
During the last week of school, a flyer was sent home with the students pointing us at Kids Bowl Free. This program provides two free games of bowling every day for registered kids. While we would likely not go bowling every day, it would be a great activity to do as a family. From the front page, we chose our state to display a list of cities and participating bowling alleys. We chose the bowling alley closest to our home, registered and immediately received an email with the coupons for our son for the next week. Each week an email is sent with the week’s coupons. Parents can also register for $24.95 to bowl two games each day. We opted not to do this, as we were unsure how many times we would actually bowl. The good news is, it seems we still have the opportunity to sign up for this offer if we end up bowling often.
These are just two free options that we found to help cure a case of summertime boredom for our son. What free or cheap options have you found?
Brought to you courtesy of Brock
Brock is a software engineer by day and personal finance blogger at night. He is a fitness junkie and enjoys grilling and smoking meat. Married with two children, Brock strives to improve his skills as a husband and father, and is always on the lookout to stretch his family’s budget as far as he can.
We went down to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. We no longer hunt for free parking, so we shelled out $10 for that, but a good time was had by all, including the neighbor’s kid we hauled along, too!
(Of course traffic in downtown DC was hideous, but then it almost always is…)
@Jenny – I can identify sometimes paying for convenience….shelling out $10 for parking to avoid MORE time driving around in horrible traffic can be well spent money. 🙂