Parenting finances were the farthest thing from my mind years ago when I watched my shy sixth grader fall in love with theatre in front of my eyes. During the opening night of “The Full Monty” at a community theater, I watched as Sam got a laugh from the audience, and his eyes went big.
He looked right at me — did I do that? I nodded back — yup. He beamed and went back to work.
But as my then-12-year-old’s hobby grew into a passion, and maybe a career, I’ve had to make the concepts of art and money work together. And I’m not alone. It’s increasingly common for kids to develop pricey hobbies as they age into adolescence, forcing moms and dads to figure out how to make it work. In 2023, parents with kids spend an annual average of $731 in extracurricular costs according to LendingTree. And as recently a 2025, the average family in the United States reportedly spent $1,106 on a child’s primary sport activity. That’s a 46% increase since 2019.
More than half a million kids play youth hockey. A neighbor of mine, whom I’ll call Hockey Dad, said he spent $17,000 his son’s hockey. Other families on his teams (yes, plural) at the time spent thousands more on private lessons.
If it’s not sports, the arts might light your adolescent’s fire. Voice lessons can go for somewhere between $50 to $100 an hour and up, as I’d discover while Sam explored his new love for musical theatre and acting. Acting lessons are in the same ballpark.
My wife and I spent at least $6,000 for Sam to pursue his passion when he was 12. That included $2,200 for camp, $1,600 for application and audition fees for college theatre programs and an amount I haven’t even tracked for lessons. And that doesn’t count the biggest expense — an arts school for his senior year in high school. It also doesn’t count the travel, including the four 1,000-mile round trips to school so far, the run to Michigan this summer for theatre camp and the many local jaunts for rehearsals.
So, How to Pay for It?
If you see your child’s new passion coming early enough, or begin your parenting journey with the knowledge that $10 plastic toys will eventually give way to pricier demands later (and trust me this happens), you could begin saving early, just as you try to do for college or retirement.
Before you can put a dollar figure on your monthly savings, it's critical that you figure out what exactly you're saving for. It often doesn’t have to be much — a little bit salted away every month from birth in a savings account or certificate of deposit would have been more than equal to Sam’s theatre addiction a dozen years later. You could put aside money from cash gifts, too; this is a much better use of any money a six-year-old boy might get than buying his 10 millionth Pokémon card.
You can ask your child to swap his or her lessons or ice time for chores. If a teenager were to replace a housecleaning or lawn service, for example, that would cover up to half of many families’ expenses.
"Families use lots of financial strategies to pay for their kids’ love of the arts," said Ellen Lettrich, a Manhattan coach who runs MT College Auditions, which helps high school juniors and seniors get into theatre camps through a selective process.
Here are some of the strategies she’s seen — and some tricks I’ve used or observed myself.
Save up
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READ MORE: Which Savings Account Is Best For Your Needs?
Start small
My son didn’t head to an arts school after one opening-night laugh. He started with a weeklong day camp 15 minutes from home and some local group improv classes. Only after three years of theatre camp, and many more community-theatre roles, did we step up to voice lessons and expensive camps.
Build the costs into things you’re going to do anyway
Not too long ago, our two-income family still needed summer day care, and Shakespeare camp wasn’t notably more expensive than a sitter. In fact, it was probably cheaper. A few summers back, we built our summer vacation around our son’s camp in Chicago, seeing museums while he was at camp during the day. We made it our business to save part of the camp tuition by using cheaper hotels. More recently, we built college visits around his camp in Michigan.
Volunteer
A coach of one of Hockey Dad’s several club teams is one of my friends, whose son is on the team. My friend helps coach in part for a break on the club tuition. Similarly, Lettrich said, high school-aged performers can often get a break on lessons by volunteering to help teach classes for their teachers’ younger pupils.
Barter
One of Lettrich’s former clients is a Broadway star whose mother bartered graphic and web design services for his dance lessons. Some kids can run a coach’s or program’s social media presence to work down coaching fees.
Make the Ask
"In some cases, a youth who makes a big impression as a performer early can raise coaching money from crowdsourcing," Lettrich said. "Also, both sports and performing arts programs often have scholarship aid — but you have to ask," Lettrich said. It’s not like college, where the financial-aid question is raised with nearly every student, she added. In Hockey Dad’s world, he said the more affluent parents accept that their fees help hold down costs for less wealthy families.
Then, and only then, should you think about college scholarships as a way to get a return on your investment, because most kids will never get there. My family will likely save $20,000 to $30,000 on college over four years, thanks to arts scholarships. But we were five years into this as a family before it became clear that Sam could compete at that level. Hockey Dad’s been at it for at least that long, and isn’t counting on his son ever playing in college.
READ MORE: How Much Should You Save Each Month?
Why Do It? Lots of Reasons
Team sports have always had the reputation for developing team play in kids, as well as the fortitude to excel that serves them in any field. That’s at least as true in a dance troupe putting on “The Nutcracker” for thousands of people, as well. "The kind of focus it takes to dance or play sports at a high level makes those young people naturally good at rigorous professions like law," according to Lindsay Bierman, chancellor at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
"Some acting training comes in handy for even mundane corporate presentations," he added, "and organizing complex shows is great preparation for lots of jobs."
And it makes the kids better people. An expensive hobby that turns into more can give them a passion that makes them strive, makes them grow and expands their horizons. And making kids better, broader people is the business parents are in, after all.
LEARN MORE: Explore how a CD ladder can help you build funds for your child’s hobbies into the future.