Hey everyone! Today's post is from my blog friend Jefferson. He lives in the St. Louis area and I've had the pleasure to meet him and his awesome wife. We don't have children, but I know that many of our awesome readers do!
Most parents want their kids to grow up to be well-rounded individuals, with a wide variety of experiences under their belt. To help facilitate this, we try to get them involved in activities from an early age, to explore their interests and to discover things in life to become passionate about.
From getting involved with sports, to taking dance or music lessons, to heading to camp in the summer, these activities can often be the very things that kids enjoy most in their lives.
The Cost
From a time perspective, keeping your kids involved is very demanding on parents. You will likely need to drive regular carpools, and many activities will require you to sit through long competitions to support your child, some of which may even require extended-day travel.
From a dollar perspective, the demands can be even greater. The registration fees themselves can vary wildly, but typically- the more competitive the league that your child enters, the higher the cost will be. You may also be required to purchase expensive equipment or uniforms so that your child can participate (dance and ice hockey come to mind as two quick examples).
The Alternative
Despite the high demands on your time and your wallet, the alternative to keeping your kids active is not an attractive option. Participating in sports and activities will teach your kids how to work well with others, and how to handle life's successes and failures.
It will also show them how to set and then realize their goals, and that the harder that you work on something, the bigger the payoff will be in the end. Physical activities will also keep your kids active and healthy, and give them a reason to go outside and be around other children their age.
In addition, my own experiences as an adolescent showed me that being involved in activities, will actually keep kids out of trouble during their teenage years. If a kid is going to swim practice or dance class after school, they are far less likely to be out looking for trouble.
Ideas For Affordable Activities:
My wife and I recently finished off paying over $20,000 of debt, an experience we continue to write about on our website, and during our period of family budget attrition, we remained determined to keep our kids active. We actually had to drop out of one or two of the more expensive activities that the kids were participating in, but we found some nice alternatives to keep them busy and social to replace them.
Your Local YMCA : The fees to have your kids join a sports league can really pack a punch. Uber-competitive soccer or baseball leagues can have costs that run as high as $1000/season! Those costs have always been far too rich for our blood, which is why we have always opted for sports leagues run by our local YMCA.
Even if you are not a member, you can often join these leagues for around $50-$100/season. If you *are* a member, the cost will be far less than that. The competition level won't be as high as is seen in the high-dollar leagues, but you can always step up if your child shows serious potential. We have also use the YMCA to introduce our children to dance, tumbling, and martial arts, at a fraction of the cost that those activities would have required elsewhere.
Join Scouting! : My middle child has been a cub scout for years, and they are easily one of my favorite organizations around. I have heard similar positive things about the girl scouts as well, and will likely sign my daughter up when she is old enough.
In my experience, the kids in scouts typically come from good families, and the focus on parent involvement really helps bring a sense of togetherness. In addition, the activities are focused around being a good citizen, and making the world a better place. The cost of signing your kids up for scouts is relatively low (around $100 yearly), considering that most packs will have 3-4 planned activities every month.
After-School Activities : My children are not yet in high school, but are getting there quickly. Even still, one rule that we will have for them is that they are REQUIRED to participate in at least one school-sponsored sport or club in school at all times.
Most of these school-sponsored clubs are totally free to participate (yes, there are exceptions), although many will require participation in fund-raisers. After-school activities are also a great way for your kids to make friends, as they will be interacting with others who have common interests, and seeing them every single day.
Religious Organizations : If you are attend a church or other religious institution, I can't recommend enough getting your children involved in the youth programs offered there. Nearly all of them will be completely free for your kids to attend, and they are a great way for your child to have something on the calendar each week where they can hang out with friends, and receive a nice message at the same time.
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Jefferson writes for the family finance site, See Debt Run. The site began as a place to chronicle a family's journey out of debt, but has evolved into a place to discuss a whole spectrum of topics around family finance. They discuss everything from saving money on groceries, to how to teach your kids about money, to even how to find out if your co-workers are making more money than you.
How do you keep your family active on a budget?
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Great post, Jefferson! I don’t have kids but I think it’s crazy how much money it costs to have your kids participate in athletics, so it’s nice to hear about some cheaper options to keep them active.
It is important to keep kids active, even if you are broke. When we were in super-frugal mode, we didn’t just want them sitting around the house all day!
I don’t have kids either, but this is very interesting and a cost I hadn’t considered. If I ever do have them, I think there is a lot I need to consider in the way of costs.
I have always maintained that kids are far more expensive in time, than they are in money. But yes, there are many costs to consider.
Great tips, we have a local YMCA that offers swim lessons, I will sign up the kids this summer for that class.
You totally should! My kids did swimming at the YMCA for years and years. This year, they have switched to Tae Kwon Do, but my mom still teaches at the Y. Their swim programs are often amazing.
We have cousins in the area so play dates help us quite a bit – free fun with cousins!
That’s awesome, Nick.. We have play dates as well. In fact, we have a family coming over tonight who has 3 kids, whose ages are all fairly comparable to ours. It should be a blast.
We have four kids involved in activities and the demands on our time and wallet are incredible. At some point, parents have to keep the activities to a certain level or they will completely overwhelm the family. I don’t enjoy running from event to event and having every weekend be packed with stuff. There has to be down time for parents and kids to relax and connect…and for our wallets to recover.
Great point, Brian. There is certainly a delicate balance. Our general policy is that all three of my kids have to be involved in ONE given activity at any given time, but typically, only one. We do make an exception for scouts however, and let my middle son play a sport and have scouts.
It is so important to build in downtime as well.. Both for us parents, and for the kids.
We have the same policy at our house; one sport and cub scouts! I feel like the $50-$100 for a season to play a certain sport is worth it for everything they will gain from the experience! 🙂
Good post Jefferson! I shudder to think of what it’ll cost us to keep our kids active once they get older as our oldest is six. I was involved in everything as a kid and know it was a big expense for my parents. We’re members of the local YMCA so we plan on utilizing that and are looking into scouting as well. There are also a number of free or very cheap alternatives here in Omaha through the Parks & Rec department. They may not be as “competitive” but it gets the kids activity and playing with others.
I’ve always been a big fan of “starting slow” when it comes to kids and sports. Let them get a taste of it through the local parks department or the Y, and if they show potential *AND* interest, then you can look into the more competitive leagues, if you want.
We don’t have a local YMCA. 🙁 This part of the country sucks in that respect.
Boy-scouting is against our family values (if they stop promoting homophobia, we’ll reconsider), as are the local religious organizations.
Right now our youngest is in daycare and our oldest does after-school care. We also do piano lessons year round and swimming in the summer (see: no YMCA, so we have to go through the park district, which only does swimming in the summer). These all cost money. Most of the free stuff in town is geared towards kids with SAHM, but they get a lot out of school, preschool, and after-school.
Actually scouting did reverse their stance on homosexuality in the last year. Read up on it. It really is a great organization and is filled to the brim with active parents who put their kids first. My middle son has made so many great friends through scouts.
I really love the programs at our local Y. Because our son attends the Y preschool, he is a member and we get a discount. They have a great gymnastics facility and rent it out for birthday parties at half the cost of any other party place around, so we went with that last year and will probably do it again.
Our son has also loved Sunday School at church. I love that it’s free (although we do contribute to the church each year) and there are three ages in there, so he interacts with kids older than him. I can already see the difference in his perspective.)
We don’t have a Y membership now, but will sign up again ,without a doubt. We have used them for birthday parties as well, and it was a total blast.
I think the rule about joining a club or sport in high school is a great idea!!
I think it’s one of the most important parts of high school. All of my friends from high school that I still talk to are the ones that I met through playing sports.
Great ideas, our family loves going to state parks, too. Cheap memberships or a la carte, it’s a great way to get out and enjoy the outdoors!
I don’t have any kids but one of my favorite free hobbies is Geo Caching. If you don’t know what geo caching is, in a quick description, it is like a world wide treasure hunt. You get coordinates of local geo caches and just go find them all over where you live. There are micro and macro caches! Macro are my favorite cause they actually have little treasures inside and you can take one home if you put something else back in to replace it.
It was a big thing for awhile and I doubt there are too many places that don’t have a at least a couple near by. It is even fun to do some farther away for the adventure and all you pay is gas. For more info on geo caching you can go here! http://www.geocaching.com/guide/
I think Girl Scouts is a great idea. I was in that during my early years of elementary school, and it was nice. I do remember most of our moms being with us and making crafts together, as well as supporting our cookie sales. It was a fun time, and a great way to make friends. I participated in drama during middle school and high school which was also fun, and mostly free.
Kids activities can be very expensive. You are right about the YMCA – we use it quite often. It’s much cheaper than putting children in private sports.
I agree with you 100 percent about keeping the kids active on various activities and can parents can achieve this even on a budget. The important thing is to do some research and be creative. Aside from time management, all it takes is a bit of financial planning also.
Hi Jefferson,
Nice post – there were a few ideas I hadn’t considered. I live in downtown Vancouver and there really aren’t a lot of cheap ways of keeping kids healthy and entertained. But the drop-in programs offered by youth centers are diverse and affordable. I would start with these types of programs before shelling out money unnecessarily.