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<p>You know the country and western song Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Goalies?</p>
<p>My kids’ ice hockey annual “tuition” was 3k+, travel expenses could easily pass 2k, lessons, clinics, camps, and then equipment. Only one of my kids was a goalie, but it was easily 4k+ of equipment, and the forward was probably 2k. And, kids grow and equipment wears out. First world problem, granted, but I’ve heard estimates that a hockey player can easily cost $10k/year. </p>
<p>I was thinking that hockey and gymnastics could be exceptions. </p>
<p>$4,000 for equipment alone?! Ouch!</p>
<p>Ballet - a pair of pointe shoes, $75, and they only last few weeks. When you have 2 dancers…I had a lot more disposable income after they went off to college.</p>
<p>@Sue22, honestly, we went high end for our precious snowflake; it can be done for less. But, I wouldn’t put her on the ice without the best helmet available ($1,200), and Brian’s pads are the lightest available ($1,500), and …</p>
<p>Now that I add it up, $4k might have been low :(( </p>
<p>Junior competitive tennis player in the North East - 15K-100K/year. Not counting people who say that their tennis budget is unlimited.</p>
<p>DD has $25,000 in instruments. Not a bargain there either…and that doesn’t include the piano. </p>
<p>@oldfort, I was just thinking that ballet was cheap in comparison! 
Pointe shoes do add up, and there’s the expense of paying for classes, but that’s pretty much it – no travel expenses, no fancy equipment, no competition fees.</p>
<p>I haven’t watched the video, but the discussion reminds me of an op-ed piece that was published during, I think, the 2008 elections on the subject of Obama’s proposed tax hike on those earning $250K or more. It was by someone who earned $300K and was trying to argue that he was middle-class. His argument was basically that since he spent all his income on things like his mortgage, kids’ tuition, and insurance, he couldn’t be called rich. Basically, because his expenses didn’t feel like luxuries, he felt they were basic necessities. But he lived in an expensive neighborhood in Chicago, his kids were in private school, etc. He just couldn’t see that most families in this country would consider him rich simply because he could always afford the best of everything – that he didn’t have to be eating caviar and cruising around on luxury yachts in order to be considered rich.</p>
<p>I wonder if our kids going to treat our grandchildren as well.</p>
<p>Seems like a lot of these desirable-for-college-admissions extracurricular activities have an implicit prerequisite of coming from a high SES family that can afford to support them. A median income family (with high school age kids) $60,000 to $70,000 per year is not likely to be able to afford $15,000 to $100,000 per year to support a competitive tennis player, $25,000 in musical instruments, or $10,000 per year in hockey equipment.</p>
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Number of classes (15-20 hrs/week), summer intensive, ballet customs for recitals, leotards, different dance shoes (jazz, flats). Oh, those pink tights, each was at least $10 and of course there would be runs after first wear/wash.</p>
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<p>Will they be able to? Or will they still be paying off their own student loans along with higher Social Security and Medicare taxes while working in a weaker labor market than their parents encountered?</p>
<p>People at that income level should also be able to piggyback onto work conferences and the like. Doesn’t anybody do spring break at grandma’s any more? </p>
<p>"Seems like a lot of these desirable-for-college-admissions extracurricular activities have an implicit prerequisite of coming from a high SES family that can afford to support them. "</p>
<p>Yes, and adcoms aren’t stupid, they know this. </p>
<p>And if your kid’s EC is expensive, then you cut down on entertainment, vacations and/or new cars. Not rocket science. </p>
<p>Saving only $10k off an income of $400k is absurd. I’m currently digging out someone who spent like that, and it frosts me to no end. </p>
<p>I don’t mind participating in these discussion IRL as long as people concede that “it’s a choice”. Yes, having your kid take expensive lessons instead of digging in the sandbox at the local park is a choice (or whatever age appropriate analogy works for you.) And it’s therapeutic to grouse about how you’re going broke financing your son’s passion for snowboarding and your D’s ballet lessons and your spouses classic 60’s record collection, complete with a mint “Yellow Submarine” cover.</p>
<p>But I get weary of the people who make it sound like they had no alternative but to spend the dough on consumption vs. savings. No realtor puts a gun to your head and makes you move to the suburb with the one acre zoning instead of the small city next door which has a wide range of housing. No coach forces your kid to participate in the expensive travel league instead of the Y’s pick up games. Nobody made one parent quit their job so they could become a fulltime chauffeur hauling their kids to their activities and throwing fast food in the back seat for dinner.</p>
<p>These are choices. Others make different choices- and they’ve got the savings to finance lots of things in their later years (kids education, parents medical and nursing costs, retirement travel) that the folks living on the McMansion might not have. </p>
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My D has already started indicating what ECs she would like us to pay for our grandchildren. My mother, God bless her, set quite a precedent! My husband wants golf or tennis and my D and future SIL (maybe) want baseball. I want music. My husband is planning to retire to cart the kid around to all sorts of activities and preschool. Since we don’t travel, don’t have expensive hobbies and are finally in a position to be able to do so (God willing), we plan to lavish time and money on the grandchildren. Assuming we have some. Please let us have some!</p>
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My son participates in a very expensive EC that is known to be beneficial to children with autism. The big program for that activity provides membership and full use of the educational component and facilities to children with disabilities for free. the typical kids are fortunate to have the opportunity as they get more mature to support and participate with the kids with disabilities. It is such a blessing to all of them. This gives the group who one could say really need to participate the ability to do so without sacrificing anything else.</p>
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<p>Okay, whoa. Your kids are obviously doing ballet at a much more intense level than mine. I’d say our classes are more like 6 hours/week, and the costumes for the (one) recital run us about $150 every year. And my kids make the tights last a pretty long time – it’s actually been months since my D said she needed new tights! (Do your kids have a mesh bag to wash them in to prevent snagging and runs?)</p>
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<p>I agree. Although I will say that nobody sits you down when your kids are first born and tells you how much all this stuff could potentially cost you. Nobody says, when your 6-year-old decides that he likes his ice hockey lessons better than his soccer lessons and would rather give up the soccer and stick with ice hockey, “by the way, you realize you are signing up for $X more per year by making this choice.” Also, nobody says “are you really sure you want to spend the money on the house in the prestigious school district? You might want that mortgage money for college later on.” At least, that wasn’t anything that people were saying 15 or 20 years ago – back then the standard wisdom was “you can always borrow money for college!” Maybe now, with COA so high, Suze Orman is making the necessity to save for college the main topic of all her books.</p>
<p>Nobody does hold a gun to your head to play ice hockey at a high level. We don’t mind, as we can afford it without difficulty, and have saved for retirement, education, etc. in spite of he hockey expense. </p>
<p>I do, however, see families who are not as capable of affording it being pressured under the guise that it’s an “investment.” For boys, it’s 1 in a million that they’ll ever earn a living in hockey, and somewhat better odds that they’ll get a scholarship or acceptance because of their hockey. For girls, the odds of scholarship or acceptance are higher, but they will at best make a so-so living if they’re relying on hockey. I tell the parents who think it’s their way to improve their kids’ educations that they’re better off having their kids become runners, and take the saved money and put it into Vanguard index funds. </p>
<p>If the kids love it and you can afford it, do it. If the kids love it and you can’t afford it, play club hockey. If you think it’s an investment, that’s salesman talk – when salesmen have no other rationale for an outrageously extravagant spend (e.g., thousands on a watch), they’ll tell you it’s an investment. Last refuge of a shady salesman, and don’t for a minute think hockey coaches/instructors/teams are immune from financial considerations. </p>
<p>Zooser- your story made me smile. I think it’s fantastic when organizations and facilities make their resources available to kids and families who need them. I have a friend who volunteers with a therapeutic riding organization and she is a big advocate for getting kids on the spectrum exposed to many different types of sports to find something that “clicks”. And I’ve got a family member who persuaded her for-profit gym to provide free weekend classes (yoga is very popular) for kids with mobility limitations.</p>
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<p>We live in the SF Bay Area and for 3 cars paid over 6K year. I later changed two of the cars to “pleasure use only” and reduced the cost to a little over 4k. </p>
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<p>My kids half-sister paid much more than that for competitive dance (ballet, lyrical, tap, etc) more or less 20 hours/week of dance classes, plus custom fit costumes and occasional travel expense. My kids, with club swimming (club swim dues, swim meets, special suits, and travel expenses) and dance (ballet/lyrical/jazz), came to a little over 10K a year (for the two of them combined). </p>