A Birthday Party for Our Daughter

For our daughter's fourth birthday, we decided to have a party in her honor. After briefly thinking about having the party at our house, we opted to hold the event at a local children's activity center. While it would have been more cost effective to host it at our house, we thought it would be less stress to hire a facility for the event.

Of course, the birthday party was priceless. We invited seventeen of her pre-school classmates and thirteen were able to attend. Our daughter was excited and her friends had a lot of fun. The total cost was $306. Here's a breakdown of the cost elements:

	Party Cost Breakdown
Category	Per Child	Total
Invitations	$0.42	$7
Party Facility	$17	$221
Goody Bags	$3	$36
Adult Food	-	$37
Tip	-	$25
Coupon Savings	-	-$20

Overall, we felt doing a party at this outside location was a good deal. The facility we used provided the invitations, gymnastic activities (90 minutes) and two party hosts for the two hour event. The cost also included pizza, cake and drinks for the kids. The hosts were very helpful in organizing the games and recording the gift information so that we could concentrate on taking pictures and talking with parents.

Our out of pocket cost to the facility was $263. If we had done the party at our house, I expect that we would have spent about $125 for food, paper goods and games. Therefore, the net additional cost was $138. It's about the cost of a nice dinner, which we feel in reasonable. Of course, we also avoided the additional effort for cleaning up after the party.

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This is not financial or parenting advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

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