Dance can be an expensive activity for parents of a dancer, considering tuition, costumes, shoes, and clothing.
If a child participates on a competition dance team there are additional costs of competition entry fees, choreography fees, more costumes as well as transportation and hotel costs to consider.
But if your child truly enjoys dance, and you are looking for a few tips on how to manage some of these costs, here are a few ideas:
Project Your Dance Costs for the Year
At the beginning of every dance season it is a good idea to project what your anticipated dance costs are for your child, or children, including class tuition costs, costumes, and dance clothing to mention a few.
Don’t forget to include transportation cost of carting your child several times a week to and from the dance studio.
Take a look at the family budget and determine what the family can afford during the year and put those dance costs in your family budget.
Check Options on Purchasing Dance Accessories for Your Dancer
Dance shoes (several different types), tights, leotards, dance bags, and a host of other equipment your child will need can be purchased at a local dance clothing store or in the dance studio that you belong.
When buying dance shoes, to make sure they are fitted properly, we recommend you purchase locally so that you can get the right fit before you buy.
However, you can check out online dance clothing and accessory websites for your other purchases. You might find some great deals throughout the year to save yourself money.
Pay Dance Tuition in Advance
Check with your dance studio to see if they offer any discounts if annual tuition is paid in full at the beginning of the dance season. If so, this might save you some money.
Family Gifting for Dance
We see an increase of parents suggesting to family members, especially grandparents, to consider purchasing a gift certificate or provide cash or a check intended to cover general or specific dance costs. These gifts are excellent for birthdays, Christmas, and other celebrations.
Also, consider asking the studio owner if they can make up some kind of gift certificate for the family member to present to the child. That can make the gift a little more exciting than cold cash.
Carpooling
Although the transportation costs to and from the studio might not seem to be that important, we see a number of families at our studio making arrangements with other dancer’s families to share driving responsibilities.
This helps each family cut down the cost of gas. It also helps save themselves some time (and as the saying goes, “time is money”), and your time is worth something.
These are just a few money saving ideas we have seen families use to keep their child’s dance costs in line with the family budget, but we would love to hear what other things you might be doing as well.
If you have any ideas, just post them in the reply section below. Thanks.
