AIBU to think this is a lot to spend on extra curricular activities per month?

[Picklesandpies]

Posting here instead of parenting as no replies -

We spend £304 a month on activities for our two DDs aged 10 and 7. This seems like a lot of money to me but I'm curious to know what others spend. This is for;

DD1 - dancing lessons, flute lessons, maths tuition, swimming lessons and Cubs.

DD2 - singing lessons, swimming lessons, guitar lessons, Beavers, rock band club at school.

Does this seem extreme? Dh earns a decent salary but we still have to be reasonably careful with money.

No, for what you are getting it's quite reasonable

We spend £100 on one a month and nothing yet on the other as he's 3 and I'm an awful mother ;)

We spend an awful lot on our DD, I would say about 10% of our income, and a lot more OP. But I think about half of that is on things that support her, rather than an activity (tutor so she can keep up with school, therapist) - she has ASD, anxiety. We are lucky that we can afford it but it does mean that we have to cut back in other areas.

I think if you can afford it and the girls appreciate it, don't worry.

The point someone was making is if you hadn't said the £ amount initially and just said we spend about 5% of our monthly income on activities then people could comment as to whether they felt the percentage was high.

By giving both the £ and the % of course we can work out your income.

I'm not sure a % of take-home pay figure helps much more than a £ one. Its % of disposable income that's relevant, and there's always so much argument about what's "disposable" that it still gets pointless.

Better to debate relative costs of specific activities if you think it's gone up a lot since you moved?

Gosh it sounds alot to me. I live in Italy where that kind of thing is way cheaper so I guess we are lucky.

We pay 25 euro a month football for both ( 6 and 8 yrs ), and 30 euro a month swimming ( the 6 yr old). They can do guitar and painting at school its 8 euros a lesson. Relatively cheap really. Scouts is free here.

£300 month seems excessive but as other posters say its relative to what you earn.

Regardless of your income, £304 a month is very reasonable for all that (in the SE).

One of my dds extracurriculars is actually saving us money. School offer before school gymnastics, and it is less than I'm paying for breakfast club. I'm up £1.50 per week!
She is on the waiting list to start 'proper' gymnastics at a gymnastics club, which will be a lot dearer!
I'm happy to pay for extracurriculars if I think the standard of teaching is good, and my children are growing and achieving. But they are quite young as yet, I may feel differently if they get into something expensive (horse riding can be very dear, I think!)

Just totted up ours. We spend £248 a month but that is for three kids, doing loads of different activities so yes yours sounds like a lot for 2 kids.

Ds - beavers, dance, karate
DD2 - brownies, dance, piano, 11plus tuition
DD1 - Guides, dance, karate, choir, stage school (3hrs)

The cost seems reasonable enough for what they do. However, they each do 5 activities a week, which does seem an awful lot. Are they not overextended?

I started a thread about this a few months ago and it ended up in the daily mail. So beware!!!

I spend more than that on my two DC. It's all relative and what you can afford vs what they enjoy and are really good at etc. London/SE is very expensive and I got a lot of replies telling me I was paying way over the odds- I'm not- it's just what most of London in particular is like unfortunately.

Cor, imagine having £6k a month to play with!

I am one of three kids and my DPs couldn't afford any extra curricular activities for any of us. We just took full advantage of any free stuff that was going on at school (not much, if I recall, though Dsis and I loved drama and did school plays). Our parents took us swimming (and DF taught us to swim). We played outside with our friends. We went out as a family every weekend to the local beach, farm, ruin, forest etc. It was a good childhood.

My DBiL is a teenager and barely a day goes by without some paid for activity or tuition going on, he's just asked his mum if he can drop a couple of things, as he'd like to just hang out at home for a few hours a week, and she is outraged!

Having said that I'll prob sign DS up to the odd thing, when he's older, as I'm in a position to afford such things. But he's 3 ATM and completely happy in the company of his parents, so we're not wasting our money yet!

It sounds a lot to me but I'm in a cheap area of the country - and if your percentage is right then on a significantly smaller income. We're quite lucky round here as they have some good cheap activities - ds does rugby which is something crazy like £25 for the year and £1 subs a week. Dd does drama and that's only £27 a term.

I think that’s a lot. We have 3 DC though only 2 are school age with extra curriculars.

DS1 - youth club £1 every other week, tennis in the summer at £30 per half term. Swimming is £25 a month and guitar lessons at school are £30 a term.

DS2 - Beavers is £35 per term, football £3 a session once a week. Swimming £25 a month.

Averages out at £75pm ish for 2 DC.

Urgh, just totted it up and it's £460 per month for us (although we pay by term for everything)! That's 3dc - 4x music lessons, 2x dance lessons, 3x swimming and 2x chess. Luckily school offer a lot of sport, which we don't have to pay for, otherwise it would be more!

Ours cost
youth club £1 per week
Boys brigade - £20 whole year
Swimming works out at £6.80 per week

We spend around £100 a month, but I keep the kids to two things a week otherwise they get too knackered and don't have enough downtime.

I've spent thousands on extra curricular activities through the years and really couldn't begin to add it all up.
It was important to us and we feel the money was well spent, you never know what your child will be good at or want for their future.
Giving them opportunities to attempt other subjects outside the classroom is important.
We are a low income family but made/ are still making sacrifices to invest in dc future.

If you can afford it and they enjoy it then it's not a problem .

I pay £20 a month for youngest to do ballet and £60 a month for eldest to do ballet, tap and swimming .

I feel that my family is at its limit in terms of time.

DS1 & 2 swimming & gymnastics. Sessions are same time or next to each other. Both at council leisure centres which keeps the cost down a little.

DS1 is also doing Beavers which is cost effective for thea range of experiences and currently doing a paid football club through school.

I want them to gain a decent level of sporting competence as a foundation. I've noticed with DS1 that he has become much more confident at balancing, jumping and climbing since he started gymnastics.

They also need their down time at home and we have a couple of free evenings a week and most of the weekend.

I think that sounds reasonable for the number of activities you have listed. My DS does football, gymnastics, singing and forest school which totals around £100 a month. Music, swimming and maths tuition are expensive so sounds like you have got some reasonable prices for those activities.

We have 3 and each child varies as to the activities and cost. DH likes to say that DD gets spoilt and every thing she wants but she is the only child that actually wants to do anything! I do offer the boys all the time and occasionalt strong arm them into signing up for an activity but it never lasts as I'm loath to spend money on something they don't like and moan about!
We pay for the kids to have membership at our gym as it has a nice pool which is often deserted when we go and works out the same price as swimming lessons but the kids are in the pool for much much longer.
So currently DS1 age 10 goes to a coding club, this is free and is for secondary age kids at the library but he's been going since he was 8 and loves it. There are no other similar things near us so unfortunately can't sign him up to anything else, anything in nearby cities starts straight after school and would take us too long to get there.
He hates sports which rules out most things and did attend beavers but didn't want to move on to cubs. He has also done minecraft club, chess club, gymnastics, guitar lessons, climbing, etc but nothing stuck.
He does have ASD so I don't put pressure on him to do stuff
DS2 is 6 and he's tried football and tae kwondo, he currently goes to Beavers and that seems to be enough for him at the moment.

DD age 9 on the other hand does cubs, piano, riding and gymnastics, she also does a dance club in school time. She has in the past done flute lessons, musical theatre, ballet, tap, fitkids, etc

It depends also on whether you use some of these things for childcare after school etc, thus reducing other costs. I spend about £250 per month for my DD (plus equipment and uniform etc) but some of it is after school clubs while I'm at work so I'm not paying for a childminder or nanny

Then some "hobbies" get rapidly more expensive as they improve in standard - so as well as music lessons you have to pay Orchestra fees and exam entry (oh I didn't include that!) and extra dance coaching or performance fees and so on. It's only too much to pay if you can't afford it and they aren't getting anything out of it, surely?

I think there's a time between 10 and 12 when it hits peak cost, then I'm hoping it will start to come down as some things just drop off...

Thanks for all of the replies. Really interesting.

Feel a bit stupid for misunderstanding the comment about percentage - sorry about that. Makes complete sense now. I was right with my calculation but we don't live a lavish lifestyle at all. Shop in Lidl to keep costs down... Big mortgage, house is a semi but in an expensive area and needs everything doing to it so that's where we have to be careful with money.

I really don't think dc feel exhausted - we have just changed some of our classes so we don't have anything on at the weekend. It's wonderful to have two full days to spend as family time again. The music lessons take place in school hours so that doesn't impact after school time. I use the time one of them is doing an activity to do something else with the other one - homework, cosy time playing games at home etc so I feel they both get down time.

If they ever said to me that they wanted them give something up I'd be fine with that as I only want them to do things they enjoy.

As long as it's nor stopping you doing things as a family like holidays, trips etc I think it's OK.