Benefits, tickets, attractions: How do you manage summer expenses?

Summer is already here and these are the most difficult months financially for many families, with spending on summer camps, attractions, vacations, entertainment and days off for adults.

How can these months be made reasonable and reduce the heavy financial expense?

Dr. Hezi Gur Mizrahi, CEO and founder of the Israel Retail Research Institute, offers a series of tips as part of the "Wella Fatarno" program that will make it possible to survive the hot and expensive months with minimal damage. "An average family increases household spending by NIS 10,000 per month in July-August," says Gur Mizrahi. 

"If a ticket to an attraction can cost NIS 150 per person, together with food and parking and a popsicle, we have already reached a thousand NIS a day of entertainment easily," he says. And what is the solution? Planning in advance: "The house is like a business, you have to organize a schedule for each day and stick to it." A large part of the excess expenses is due to poor planning or a lack of planning and these expenses can be reduced through a preliminary examination and proper planning of the expenses.

Preliminary planning and building schedules

•Plan the summer vacation in advance, determine who takes time off, what we do each and every day and how much it costs us. 

•After the initial planning and examination of the costs, check if the forecast meets the expectations. Set aside an amount that you are allocating for the benefit of the summer and build an entertainment itinerary from it.

Surveys and finding discounts: why pay full price?

• Credit cards offer unique benefits worth checking out. Almost every person is associated with at least one consumer club.

• Various member clubs, such as Hvr, Hot, the Teachers' Union, the Police Funds, Yedidim Plus, Yours, behatsdaa, the Lottery and more, offer significant discounts.

• The discounts sometimes reach more than fifty percent if you check carefully and associate with the right club. 

• A few examples: a movie ticket costs NIS 42.50 at the box office, most credit cards have discounts of 1+1, you have already saved 50% on the expense. At Hot Club you can buy a single ticket for NIS 36 and there are also deals with popcorn and drinks.

At the Lottery Club you can purchase vouchers for restaurants that represent up to 50% discount. A voucher worth NIS 150 for a Domino's pizza for NIS 99. You can also find the same discounts on credit cards. At Menadon Hot, you can have a regular discount of up to 10% in restaurants.

Sometimes there are discounts for more than one club, check which is more profitable for you: for example, at the lunapark there is a discount for behatsdaa, the teachers' union and a credit card - check which is the most profitable.

Coupon sites - tens of percent discounts

• Coupon sites offer the purchase of tickets with discounts that sometimes reach more than 50%. 

• On the old Cuponofesh website you can save up to 50% of the costs even if you are not associated with large consumer clubs. 

 • Many resorts offer pre-sale on site at a discount of up to 35%. Examples: on the Cuponofesh website, for example, you can find a package of tickets for Kiftzuba for two adults and two children for 249 instead of 320, a ticket for the Guy beach water park for 96 instead of 140, and a Limat 2000 ticket for NIS 89 instead of NIS 140.

Nutrition outside the home - it is better to stop at the supermarket

• Proper planning of the diet can save huge amounts. 

 • Before leaving for a daily attraction, do some shopping at the large supermarket, buy snacks in bulk sales, soft drinks, fruits and vegetables. 

 • Making homemade sandwiches will lead to savings of at least 65% of spending on eating out. Enjoy a glacier or ice cream that we can't bring with us. But here you can save money at the beach - buy at the monitored kiosk and not at the popsicle seller passing by the beach. In the parks in the machines and not in the ice cream parlor.

And one last word: it is important to manage an annual savings plan that will cover at least half of the expenses of the summer months.