Most parents spend a lot of their time shuttling their kids to various activities, and it seems their kid's participation isn’t just costing parents their time, it’s costing them a lot of their money as well.
A new LendingTree survey finds:
- 70% of parents say one or more of their children are involved in at last one extracurricular activity.
- Among the most popular activities:
- Sports teams (57%)
- Music (44%)
- Dance (42%)
- Gymnastics (28%)
- Cheerleading (17%)
- 24% of parents with a kid in a competitive activity say they spend $4,000 or more each year on these activities.
- 46% say they have stress over how they’ll pay for them.
- 79% of parents have actually gone into debt because of their kid’s extracurricular activities.
- That’s an increase from 62% in 2019.
But apparently a lot of parents feel shelling out those bucks is worth the money.
- In fact, 87% are hoping the activity will lead to income for their child, giving them a good return on their investment.
- And you’d think parents got a break last year, but 65% continued to pay for activities despite the pandemic.
- And they aren’t just spending the money during the school year.
- 80% of parents plan to spend money for summer programs for their kid.
- 73% will go into debt to do so.
Source: LendingTree