Saving Money on Kids Birthday Parties

Celebrating your child’s birthday can be a huge experience for some families. You might go all out with an elaborate themed birthday party or keep it simple with a family only party.

According to polls the average 1st birthday can run about $500 and each birthday after costs about $400 for parents. These totals were just for the party themselves and did not include any additional gifts. If these amounts seem pretty high to you, let’s look deeper into the costs and how to save money on kids’ birthday parties!

How much should you spend on a child’s birthday?

Whenever anyone asks me how much they should spend on anything not just a birthday party, my answer is always whatever you can comfortably afford. So, if that is $50 or $500, that is totally fine as long as you don’t have to go into debt to spend the money!

This $400-500 range for birthday parties just seems to be really high to me. I decided to conduct my own poll of budget-conscious families. You may remember my Easter Spending poll where the budget conscious families only spent about $79 versus the national average of about $180.

Total Amount Spent on Kids Birthday Party	Number of Families	Percentage of Total
$25	1	0.5%
$50-75	4	2.3%
$100	20	11.6%
$125	5	2.9%
$150	15	8.7%
$200	18	10.5%
$250	7	4.1%
$300	43	25%
$400	10	5.8%
$500	20	11.6%
$600	8	4.7%
$750-999	5	2.9%
$1000	10	5.8%
$1001-1500	4	2.3%
$2000	2	1.1%
Totals:	172	100%

The most common amount spent on birthday parties was $300, but the overall average for all 172 families came out to be $381.25. Yes, that is still lower than the $400-500 national average, but to me personally that still seems pretty high especially if you have more than one child.

How long do birthday parties last?

Typically, a child’s birthday party should last 1.5-2 hours long. This is especially true for younger kids since their attention span and interest level will start to go down over time. Older kids and teens can usually have a bigger time frame up to 4 hours depending on the activity and the situation.

To save the most money on a birthday party, you will also need to look at what time of day you have the party. If you schedule your party around lunch or dinner time, it will be expected that you serve a meal. Try to pick a morning slot like 10am or afternoon like 2-4pm so that you can serve less food but still have lots of fun!

Cheap Places to have a Birthday Party

The cheapest place to have a birthday party will always be at your own house or a family member’s house, but if you don’t have a big enough space that may not work for you. For instance if you live in an apartment, you may want to check if you can use or rent an on site playground, pool, or clubhouse.

To save the most money, you will want to skip the traditional kid party places like bowling, Chuck-E-Cheese type activity centers, and skating rinks. Keep in mind these party places are made for convenience and therefore cost a lot of money for that time savings of not having to plan, to decorate, and to clean up at the end.

Other cheap places to host a party:

playground or park (some have pavilions with seating and grills too!)
municipal buildings or community rec centers (our city hall has a party room that is free to rent for those that live within city limits)
church basement or activity center
daycares or schools (some places offer the ability to rent out locations on the weekends since they are mostly using during the weekday)
state parks (usually just have to reserve the location with a small deposit)
public pools or YMCA

Tips for Low Cost Party Decorations

Sometimes the biggest expense to host a party is to decorate it! Just take a look at any party supply store or party aisle at Walmart or Target and you will see almost every cartoon character you can think of on a napkin, plate, or banner.

Use these tips to save money on decorations:

Focus on colors on characters (whatever theme you are doing from Frozen to a Luau, just pick solid color plates, napkins, and cups)
If you must have characters, buy stickers and let the kids decorate their own cups!
Choose basic latex balloons and fill them at the Dollar Store. Fancy balloons can cost upwards of $5-10 each.
Bake a cake or cupcakes at home or skip the cake and opt for ice cream or cookies. (Make it a decorate your own cookie or make your own sundae to turn it into an experience too!)
Skip the paper invites and send a picture of an invite by text message or set up an event page on Facebook
Ditch the fancy birthday outfit or personalized year shirt and get a plain light-colored shirt. Let each of the kids write a birthday message in sharpie to the birthday kid. Now it’s fun and a memory! You can also buy an iron-on number for the year and put it on yourself.

Backyard Birthday Party Ideas for Kids

If you decide to have a party at home and have a decent size yard, you can throw a backyard bash very easily! Most of the time once you have a theme, the rest of the planning is really fun and quick. If you have a grill or outdoor kitchen you can serve low-cost foods like hamburgers and hotdogs!

The best ideas for parties typically come from your kids, all you need to do is think about what they like to do and what they like to read or watch. My 5-year-old is currently obsessed with firemen, dragons, and cooking. Any of those 3 interests can be a theme for a party!

Dig deep and look at what really interests your kids, this could be dinosaurs, trains, Peppa Pig, or Sesame Street for toddlers. Older kids might like American Ninja competitions, horseback riding, or sports like baseball and soccer.

Personalized themes based on your kids’ interests will definitely make a birthday party feel more custom and be more memorable!

Outdoor Birthday Party Ideas

My daughter’s birthday is at the end of summer (August) and right at the start of school. For her birthdays we typically want to do something outside but do it early in the morning around 10am to beat the sweltering heat.

Outdoor Party Ideas:

Tea party (serve brunch type foods and have everyone come in a pretty dress or princess costume)
Luau Pool party (utilize a home pool or community pool and serve bbq, chips and fruit)
Bear Hunt (if you have ever heard this song, you can have the party at a park and have the kids hunt for bears like the song lyrics)
American Ninja Party (set up obstacle courses and have the kids compete against each other in mini competitions)
Scavenger Hunt party (these can be done at a park or your backyard. Give every kid a list of items to find and see you does it first or gets the most)
Water Anything (This can be having a party with a slip in slide, water balloon or water gun wars, inflatable pools, or just bubbles)

Birthday Party Ideas in Winter

My son’s birthday is in February and even in Georgia it is typically too cold to have a party outside. We had to get a little creative on this because our house is not very big, at least not big enough to host 20+ people inside comfortably. Keep in mind that if the temperature will be less than 60 degrees, you may want to bring that party indoors.

Winter Birthday Party Ideas:

Baking or Make your Own Pizza Party (this is a great idea for smaller parties, and allows each kid to decorate their own cookie or make their own pizza)
Craft party (whether at home or a rented space, have the kids make a craft with painting, build their own box car derby, have an art class, or make their own noise makers with household items)
Dance Party (make it an 80s or 90s theme and dress up, hang some sparkly lights, and play lots of tunes. Have a dance off or do group dances like the chicken dance)
Indoor Igloo Party (the cutest mom collected boxes all year long and spray painted them white. Then the kids built their own igloos style forts and had an absolute blast! She served ice cream instead of cake too!)
Board Game Party (set up different stations of different games and the kids can play lots of different games against each other, throw in some twister or group games too!)

Inexpensive Birthday Party Ideas

We typically do the ultimate inexpensive birthday parties at home with family. For us that means going to visit grandparents, seeing all the cousins, having an easy late lunch, and finishing it up with cupcakes.

Some other inexpensive birthday party ideas include having a slumber party with movies or taking a small group of kids to an amusement park, activity center, or movie theatre.

Last year for my son’s 4th birthday, he woke up to having 4 banana muffins, he got to pick out 4 toys at the dollar store, we hit the $4 menu at a local fast-food restaurant, he had a 4-scoop ice cream sundae instead of a cake and ended the day with 4 new books. He had so much fun, had no clue what was coming next, and he love it! It was a very low dough day, but it was all we could afford.

Low Cost Birthday Ideas

Whether your budget is $25 or $500, you can really stretch your dollar if you want to get creative. You may have read the article on “Value Based Spending” and seen that this year our 5-year-old opted not to have a party at all.

He did not want to be the center of attention and instead of doing the party thing he wanted to have a family fun day at the trampoline park. We had estimated a party costing $350 but ended up spending about $50 for a full day of jumping, grabbed lunch, and bought some decor items for his now big boy room.

Before you budget and spend a fortune, ask your kids what they would like, and their answer may surprise you. Offer a choice of a party, an experience, or a big-ticket item like a tablet or gaming system.

Even if your budget is super low, you can still show your kids that you want to celebrate them. Cook their favorite dinner, bake a cake or cupcakes, and tell them how much you love them.

One of the major downsides to having huge expensive parties every year on birthdays is that each year it has to be bigger and better than before. My sister was one of those that went completely over the top every year and spent a small fortune on elaborate themed parties. I’ve always wondered if these parties were more for her than for her kids, because her kids were so small at the time, and they would never remember these events.

The whole point of birthdays is to celebrate growth and there is no wrong way to celebrate. My only recommendation is that you plan out any celebrations ahead of time, make a budget and stick to it, save up for the party in cash, and NEVER put a birthday party or gift on a credit card.

As I get older, I am realizing that it was never the stuff or the parties that I remember most, it was the adventures and experiences that I remember from my childhood. It’s the pizza and game nights, the picking strawberries at a farm and making strawberry shortcakes, and flying kites in the park on a windy day.

Spending time with your loved ones will always be more priceless than the fanciest Instagram worthy birthday party!