We're just seeing now how it can get a bit costly with 2 in school and #3 starting kinder next year so. School fees, activities etc eat into the budget. My oldest do swimming lessons which cost about $300 per term and we'll also be starting #3 next year. A trip to the play centre doesn't leave me with much change out of $50 and don't even talk about how much money we spent at the aquarium for M's birthday, but then realistically we would have spent more on a party at home I reccon Maccas for dinner costs about $30 too to feed all of us.

I guess we balance it out though by not splurging out as much as we used to. When we only had a couple of kids and our mortgage was smaller I don't think we had much more extra disposable income. Or maybe we did but it was wasted lol. I do stuff like Christmas club through the year to save for pressies. I bake heaps which the kids prefer in their school lunches.

Our car is an ex fleet bog standard commodore station wagon that we got cheap because it had a lot of K's and we put a di ckie seat into the back of it. We could have taken out a loan and got ourselves a nice flash people mover or a 4wd but didn't want to commit to more debt just to get around.

Our home is a 4br and quite big so we're lucky in that respect that space isn't an issue. The two older boys are bunked up together and it works well for them.