We've taken our daughter to a really well known gymnastics class starting when she was 5. She started in the Kindergarten class there in the fall of 2017. She's 6 now and moved up to their level 1 recreational class. Its only an hour and a half, one time a week. She loves it. Its $100 a month. She makes friends there, the coaches are great, she's learning a lot of self confidence and fitness, which are the primary reasons we wanted her there. It was actually her idea to do gymnastics as opposed to Soccer or Dance or anything else that we showed her. So, she's happy and the price and time commitment are reasonable.
So, last night my wife and I were there watching out daughter and we started chatting with some other parents there. Their daughters were 7 and 8. One is on their competition team, the other is on the pre-competition team. So, their time commitment is 2 weekdays of 3.5 hours, 4 hours on saturday and on top of that, they have to go to a dance school one night a week for the floor routine. Time commitment aside, the one blurted out that its $3,000. We're not sure if that is per quarter (which is what they bill, ours is $300/qtr), semi annual or annual. We didn't wanna ask because our jaws were already on the floor.
Now, there is no guarantee that our daughter will even want to do that. She might want to just stay on the recreational side and just have fun. But holy shit!!!!!! That cost is astronomical, as i'd lean that it is most likely per quarter. My wife and I are on the Dave Ramsey 7 step plan. We're working on paying off debt, which we're doing well with. But even if we paid off our debt before this, we'd be on a diet of rice and beans.
I wanted to ask some others here, parents, who the hell do you do this? Are there any tips or tricks that i could learn to make this more manageable? How would you even consider this if you have a second or third child, let alone a kid in daycare. My wife and I have a HHI of around $145/yr. We have a monthly budget, and almost all our extra money goes toward paying down debt. The reasons i'm asking is because i want to have a mental plan for this if my daughter would eventually want to do this.
Submitted December 21, 2018 at 09:36AM by eynonpower http://bit.ly/2RaKEex
