Teaching your kids to swim without going broke!

Do you ever find yourself surrounded by a group of moms that are talking about all of their kids extracurricular classes and wonder… HOW DO THEY AFFORD THEM?! 

I wish I could walk into a local swim school and pay $250+ for my two older kids to learn how to swim, but we can’t.  My husband, for some unknown reason, has decided that our mortgage payment is more important to make every month over my kids entertainment.  So this forces me to become creative.

Summer is here and my kids don’t know how to swim.  My oldest two boys are 6 and 4 years old and they literally sink in water.  A drowning rat has a better chance of survival if it fell into a pool over my kids.  Not a great plan since we live 15 minutes from the beach and every other house on our block has a pool.

So after a lot of thought and some late night internet searches, I came up with a few solutions to my problem:

1.      The YMCA offers free pool safety classes!  Now, your kids may not learn how to swim laps but they may learn enough to save their life if they happen to fall into a pool.  Here is the link for more information:

http://www.ymcaoc.org/swim-lessons/safe-and-splash

2.     Call your local college and ask them to post an ad on their community bulletin board (they usually have a board in the quad area offering jobs, rooms for rent, and items for sale) or contact their swim coach.  Usually, especially in the summer time, there will be at least one college student who is looking to make extra money by teaching swim classes.  They can come to your pool, neighborhood pool, or they may even have one at their parent’s house you can use. 

3.     Craigslist is filled with great people looking for some part time work.  I did a search on the Orange County Craigslist website for “swim lessons” and came across a local stay-at-home mom who was offering swim classes.  Her standard rate was $17 for a private lesson and $13 for a group class (3 students) and she will give discounts for referrals.  Once I heard about the discounts, my immediate response was to find other friends who wanted to save money.  After posting her ad on my Facebook page I found that we had a friend in common, making me feel even more comfortable with using her.  My kids will start their lessons with her when school gets out.   I will make sure to post a follow up review after our first week.

4.     Ask your friends or at least your Facebook friends (those people you went to high school with who you casually knew back then, but now know way too much about their personal drama- they can be helpful on top of entertaining)!  This is by far the best way of finding a great deal.  Maybe one of the moms from your son’s preschool uses her high school niece, or someone has a friend from church, or maybe one of your friends is looking for an extra job and will offer to help you out.  Either way, if you don’t ask you will never know.  So hurry up and run to Facebook and ask around.

Parenting in Orange County does not have to put you in bankruptcy court.  Your kids can have fun during the summer and you can stay within your budget… even if your budget isn’t very big. 

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