Spending on kids activities

[Anonymous]

Mortgage spending should not ideally be more than 25-30% of net income per month.
What is that rate for spending on kids' activities?

[Anonymous]

No idea, but I'd estimate we spend about $2000 a month on kid activities, more in the summer when we have a lot of activity travel.

[Anonymous]

Averages to $2,300 on three kids monthly. Music lessons, math tutoring, foreign language tutoring, swim lessons, math competitions, fencing etc… I am astounded by the amount but we have the money and it is a small % of overall income.

[Anonymous]

Including aftercare? A ton.

[Anonymous]

One mid, probably like $600/month? Which seems like a lot to me. Music and sports.

[Anonymous]

After-school clubs, aftercare and weekend classes come to about $1100 monthly for 1 child. Summer camp is obviously more expensive.

[Anonymous]

Including aftercare, we spend about $500-600 on activities for one elementary-age child. Our aftercare is really inexpensive. The big ticket items are swim and dance. Everything else is pretty negligible, like a $50 fee for a running club that covers 3 months of practices. We take advantage of school-based clubs and programming whenever we can, mostly because it's more convenient and she can do it with kids she already knows, but a nice side effect is that these tend to be more affordable.

I would get it will get progressively more expensive as she gets older and would not be surprised to be spending $1500 or more a month by high school. With one kid this doesn't seem like a huge deal. It also feels like we are constantly outgrowing costs which then make it easier to just plug that money into activities. You just go from spending money on childcare and diapers to spending it on sports and enrichment. We're still spending less now than we did when she was two. If it creeps back up to $2000-3000 a month in high school, oh well -- that's what we spent for the first 4 years of her life, too, so it doesn't seem like a big deal if that was what we also spent for the last 4 years of her childhood. It's temporary -- I'm not going to be paying for dance lessons and swim team for the rest of my life, but I'm happy to pay for it as long as she loves it.

[Anonymous]

I spend 40k on daycare and aftercare for my 3 kids. Probably 1k on other activities all year like soccer, scouts and basketball. It’s like a drop in the bucket.

[Anonymous]

I never looked at it in terms of w percentage. It was more a question of whether it was something we could afford and whether it was reasonable (with the reasonableness greatly influenced by the child’s level of commitment).

So, for example, when my preschooler begged for ballet classes but I thought she mainly wanted to wear a tutu, twirl around, and have people applaud, I explained what a ballet class actually involved, made sure she understood she would be committing to several weeks, and then signed her up for the shortest session the Rec department offered so she could try it out, and it turned out that was more than enough for her. On the other hand when that same child as a middle school student spent hours a day playing her rented cello for fun, buying her a cello, signing her up for private lessons, and allowing her to join a youth orchestra seemed reasonable, even though it cost considerably more than that ballet class. However, when she started to lose her enthusiasm and stopped keeping up with the practice for the youth orchestra, I told her I wouldn’t support her signing up again for the following year. I always told her that the more she was willing to do for an activity, the more I was willing to do. I just wasn’t interested in paying for an activity and spending the time and effort required on my part if she didn’t enjoy the activity enough to do her part.

Fortunately, we were able to afford the activities my kids were interested in, at least at the levels they were interested in. If they had been extremely passionate about something at the edge of what we comfortably could have afforded, we would have probably tried to see what we could manage, but we wouldn’t have made the other kids sacrifice their interests, much less sacrificed investing in college funds, retirement funds, etc. While a mortgage (or some kind of housing expense) is a necessity, as childcare may be as well, EXTRAcurricular activities are extras that can be indulged in if it works for the family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I never looked at it in terms of w percentage. It was more a question of whether it was something we could afford and whether it was reasonable (with the reasonableness greatly influenced by the child’s level of commitment).

So, for example, when my preschooler begged for ballet classes but I thought she mainly wanted to wear a tutu, twirl around, and have people applaud, I explained what a ballet class actually involved, made sure she understood she would be committing to several weeks, and then signed her up for the shortest session the Rec department offered so she could try it out, and it turned out that was more than enough for her. On the other hand when that same child as a middle school student spent hours a day playing her rented cello for fun, buying her a cello, signing her up for private lessons, and allowing her to join a youth orchestra seemed reasonable, even though it cost considerably more than that ballet class. However, when she started to lose her enthusiasm and stopped keeping up with the practice for the youth orchestra, I told her I wouldn’t support her signing up again for the following year. I always told her that the more she was willing to do for an activity, the more I was willing to do. I just wasn’t interested in paying for an activity and spending the time and effort required on my part if she didn’t enjoy the activity enough to do her part.

Fortunately, we were able to afford the activities my kids were interested in, at least at the levels they were interested in. If they had been extremely passionate about something at the edge of what we comfortably could have afforded, we would have probably tried to see what we could manage, but we wouldn’t have made the other kids sacrifice their interests, much less sacrificed investing in college funds, retirement funds, etc. While a mortgage (or some kind of housing expense) is a necessity, as childcare may be as well, EXTRAcurricular activities are extras that can be indulged in if it works for the family.

Love this response.

I’d also encourage you to look at all household discretionary spending as a category. You can spend more on extracurricular activities if you cut down on your travel budget, etc. But make sure your long/term goals (e.g. college, retirement) are prioritized.

[Anonymous]

$60 a month last year for Spanish. Nothing now that they are in middle school.
He loves school, hanging out with friends, and playing his video games. Those keep him busy and don't cost much.
Older kid also didn't do much besides rugby. Now in college and doing great.
I would spend 5% max take home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mortgage spending should not ideally be more than 25-30% of net income per month.
What is that rate for spending on kids' activities?

well it should be what you can afford, after adequately saving for retirement and college and living within your means. We spent $2-3K/month on each kid (tutoring, therapies, activities) but it was a small percentage of our budget

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:$60 a month last year for Spanish. Nothing now that they are in middle school.
He loves school, hanging out with friends, and playing his video games. Those keep him busy and don't cost much.
Older kid also didn't do much besides rugby. Now in college and doing great.
I would spend 5% max take home.

Was the $60/month for a Spanish tutor? A private class?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:$60 a month last year for Spanish. Nothing now that they are in middle school.
He loves school, hanging out with friends, and playing his video games. Those keep him busy and don't cost much.
Older kid also didn't do much besides rugby. Now in college and doing great.
I would spend 5% max take home.

Was the $60/month for a Spanish tutor? A private class?

There is no way it was for a private tutor. That would run you $60/session. Most likely a Spanish class that met 1x/week at that price

[Anonymous]

I'm not including aftercare (since that's childcare) or my very basic summer camps (DPR - also essentially childcare).

My kids are 5.5 and 4 and we've done the following paid activities:

-One session of soccer before my oldest started PK3 - $250

-Three sessions a year of swimming for both kids - $250 per kid per session, so $1500 per year for the two kids together. I think this is our third year of that.

The end.