Lazy Man and Money

Set Your Kid on FIRE

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Kids with MoneyThere are lot of good things you can do with the FIRE (financial independence, retire early) acronym, but that title is certainly not one of them. Of course, I mean set your kid on the path to FIRE.

There’s a lot of talk in the media about the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement. You can find several stories of people who retired in their thirties. That level of extremely early retirement has some people claiming that it’s dangerous and too many things can go wrong with that plan over the next 50+ years. For this article, I’d like to put that debate aside. It is a valid debate worth having, but let’s assume you are in the pro-FIRE camp. After all, why else would be here reading this?

Before we get started on whether you should start your kid on the path to FIRE, we have to tackle an important question:

Does Kid FIRE Make Any Sense?

Unless you are Ryan Kaji of Ryan’s World fame, Kid FIRE is unlikely to happen. It’s common sense that most kids won’t be making the big money necessary to support 80 years of living. So, Kid FIRE, on its own makes no sense. However, building the foundation for kids to reach FIRE later in life DOES make sense.

Everyone I know who has been interested in FIRE has always expressed one regret. They wish they had known about it before so they could have gotten started earlier in life. Outside of winning the parent lottery and having Beyonce as your mom, starting out as a kid is as early as you can get.

So what could a blueprint for “Kid FIRE” look like?

Getting your Kid on the path to FIRE

There are many different paths to FIRE and working with a lump of clay fresh-minded human gives you access to many of them. I looked at a few ways to Starting Your Kids on a Financial Independence Path more than a couple of years ago. Two years normally doesn’t seem a long time to me, but it was pre-COVID and, as we know, time after that stopped working normally. It’s also quarter of my kids’ lives.

Here are a few things to start with:

Learn Cooking

Back then I had mentioned a desire to get my kids interested in cooking. We signed them up for an after-school class. At the time, no one new that everyone would become cooking experts. The kids had a lot of opportunity to learn and it’s gone well considering they are 7 and 9. I love this core life skill because it can save you thousands of dollars in food costs vs. restaurants. Some of my favorite FIRE bloggers (such as Retire by 40 and Root of Good) show off their cooking expertise about once a month.

Be Handy

I’m not handy at all. I can barely fix anything. I wonder if my mother still has those old Time-Life Fix-it-Yourself books. Maybe they help. It can save you a lot of money being able to fix things yourself. It can also be a main career or a side-hustle to make very good money for a few hours work.

However, being handy can shine in other ways. We have three rental properties and it would be great if I could fix everything instead of writing a check. Let’s take it a step further. Carl from from 1500 Days writes about how live-in home flipping built his nest egg. Essentially, he and his wife buy unattractive houses and fix them up while living in them. When they sell, they can legelly keep up to hundreds of thousands in tax-free profits (though usually it’s closer to tens of thousands in reality). They’ve managed to make ~$650,000 over several flips. Of course they have invested that money and it has compounded over years.

House Hacking

The live-in flip described above is one way to house hack, but there are others. The best house hacker I know is Chad Carson and he has a free guide to house hacking. The main idea is to buy a multi-family and live in one unit while renting out the other units. The rent from the other properties, in some cases, can pay for the whole mortgage. In a lot of ways it is like paying for your own home by being a live-in superintendent.

I have Carson’s book Retire Early With Real Estate and it’s a great read. (That’s also an affiliate link, so I’ll make a small commission if you decide to buy it.) There are so many different types of house hacking available and you don’t need hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a multi-family to get started.

It could get a little tricky, but I think it’s possible to combine the live-in flip with house hacking. It’s obviously going to take a lot of time, but it could lead to significant profits in someone’s early-mid 20s.

Getting and Early Start with Learning About Money

All the above are some concrete examples of things that can help them reach financial independence. However, a couple of weeks ago, I wrote how to teach your kids about money and financial education at a young age can go a long way. My kids aren’t going to be retiling a bathroom, cook us dinner, or hack housing costs for some time. Until then, they can learn about financial concepts, so they build great money habits at a young age.

Earning a High Income

The ultimate “cheat code” to FIRE is having a high salary. There are plenty of people who make a lot of money and spend it all. However, if you can avoid that trap, and live fairly frugally FIRE finds friendship with you. (I may have went overboard on the alliteration there.)

How do you get to that high salary? Traditionally, it starts with education and choosing a career that pays well. It’s not a secret which careers are the most lucrative. However, nowadays it makes a lot of sense to pay attention to the cost of college. A lot of college debt can push that FIRE plan back quite a bit.

Final Thoughts on “Kid FIRE”

Kids should be kids. It’s fun for me to write about them managing rental properties and swinging hammers, but they’ll have time before those days come around. For me, it will happen in a blink of an eye and I’ll wonder where the years went. It’s important that they enjoy these years.

I like to think that I can push them towards a certain future. It feels like I can because they are still very young. As they get older, they’ll develop their own interests and go down a path that they choose.

I hope that they’ll be interested in FIRE and if so, I think some of these ideas could be useful. If you were trying to create a blueprint for FIRE from scratch, what would it look like? Let me know in the comments.

Seven Ways To Teach Your Kids About Money

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teach kids money

The following comes from Kid Wealth. If you enjoy this article, you’ll find more detail on each item at: How To Teach Your Kids About Money.

I am passionate about several things, but two of them are teaching kids and money. Teaching kids comes with the territory of being a stay-at-home dad. I couldn’t have gotten through 15 years of money blogging if I found financial literacy a chore.

There are so many ways to teach kids about money… perhaps too many. I started outlining this article and found more and more ways to teach valuable money lessons. It’s easy to go overboard, remember that young children need to just be children. Money management should be near the bottom of their priority list. That’s why many of the suggestions below focus on things that kids find fun.

1. Teach your kids about money without even trying

Whether you like it or not, your kids are watching you all the time. They see a lot of the everyday ways that you use money. I know my frugal and investing habits came from my mother. As a young child, I remember rare triple coupon shopping at the grocery store. As a teen, I would also read the copy of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine that came to the house. That was a good way to learn about financial topics such as corporate earnings and interest rates.

Consider giving your kids an allowance. They’ll create strong money habits if they are allowed to occasionally purchase their own toys. One of the core ideas is to have a “give, save, spend” piggy bank, such as this one. It’s a fun way for them to sort where all their pennies should go.

2. Teach your kids about money with books

There are two main ways to teach kids about money with books, give them one or read one yourself. I recommend doing both.

The best book to give a kid to teach them about money was written in 1989. It’s If You Made a Million. It’s written for kids and introduces them to coins, saving, spending, investing, compound interest, mortgages, and even financial independence. It does it with excellent illustrations. I wrote a review of If You Made a Million here.

Younger kids, in preschool, should read this M is for Money review.

Finally, if you are looking for a book to help you teach your kids about money, get Make Your Kid A Money Genius (Even If You’re Not): A Parents’ Guide for Kids 3 to 23 by Beth Kobliner. It’s a great read from cover to cover. What I love about this book is that it covers teenagers and young adults. Older kids benefit from financial lessons too.

3. Teach your kids about money with podcasts

I have to be honest, I’m not a podcast person. I think it’s because I can’t listen to one thing and write about another at the same time. I’ve found two very good money podcasts for children.

1. Kids, Money, and More

This is mostly for very young kids, such as kindergartners. It covers the basics of how to save, being mindful about your spending, and giving. Anisa Kurji and her two sons take you through a money journey in about 10 minutes (or less). It’s perfect for the ride to school. There are only about 10 episodes, but that might be enough to mix in to change the routine every couple of weeks.

2. Million Bazillion

This podcast tackles interesting questions like why we need money and how it came about. Most of the episodes tackle one question. Each episode is about 22 minutes long, so you could plan for this on long car rides. This is a good speed for my 9-year-old.

It’s sponsored by Greenlight, which is a debit card for kids. I haven’t heard too much about it, so if you have experience with that, let me know in the comments below.

3. NPR’s Planet Money Summer School

There are two seasons of Planet Money Summer school that are perfect for teaching teens about money. Season one is about macroeconomics. Season two covers the basics of investing.

4. Teach your kids about money with television

I know, kids watch too much television these days. It’s good to have limits. However, if they are going to watch television anyway, you can use it to advance their financial education. There are two shows that I think you should focus on.

Teen Titans Go!

That link goes to a list of about a half-dozen episodes that I have reviewed that focus on personal finance. There are more than 325 episodes of Teen Titans Go! so it’s usually not about personal finance. However, there’s an episode about building wealth with rental properties. That covers the importance of good credit history and credit score. Another episode teaches the value of money with a weird analogy of bees being the currency.

Warren Buffett’s Secret Millionaire Club

Did you know that Warren Buffett’s entrepreneurial lessons are available as a cartoon for kids? Yep. You can watch over twenty episodes of his group of young teens learn money lessons. It’s free to stream, with no subscription service to buy. Usually, I mix this in as a treat on days that I’ve had to homeschool as a break.

Looking for more ideas? See Teach Your Kids About Money with Television.

5. Teach your kids about money with board games

Every reader has to be familiar with Monopoly, so I won’t waste words covering it. You are also probably familiar with the game of Life. It wasn’t until playing that with my kids recently that I realized it can teach the importance of having a high-earning career at an early age. Perhaps the best of the mainstream money games is Pay Day.

The best board game to teach your kids about money is The Allowance Game. You earn money for doing things like mowing the lawn, but you can lose money if you break a window. Like all the other board games you use play money which is good for learning math concepts like addition and subtraction. This one adds coins to the mix which is great for learning decimals.

6. Teach your kids about money with online courses

When COVID-19 hit, parents and kids turned to online learning. It wasn’t as good as being in the classroom, but many kids now have improved computer skills. That makes online courses for teaching kids about money a perfect fit.

MoneyTime – Financial Literacy for Kids

Earlier this year, I reviewed MoneyTime at the link above. It’s designed for kids ages 10 to 14, but my 8-year-old battled through a couple of lessons and it went okay. Unless you’re an evil parent with a personal finance website, I would stick with the recommended ages. If I were to build a personal finance curriculum for kids MoneyTime would be a core component.

Choose FI Foundation

The Choose FI Foundation has another money course for kids designed for kids in the 3rd to 5th grade. I haven’t gotten the opportunity to review this yet, but I have a 3rd grader now, so hopefully, we get a chance over one of the school vacations this year.

Both of these courses cover important topics like the danger of credit cards and bad debt.

7. Teach your kids about money with video games

One of my earliest memories of learning about money comes from the classic video game Lemonade Stand. There are ad-supported free versions online and versions in your mobile app store of choice. It’s a great way to learn about supply and demand, but it will probably get old after a few hours.

If you are looking for a 2021 version of Lemonade Stand, I suggest Pizza Company by Osmo. Osmo makes video games come alive in the real world. You set the tablet in a stand and a mirror redirects the camera in front of the tablet. Kids build things in front of the tablet and the Osmo game interprets it on the screen. It sounds complicated but it’s so easy a 4-year-old can get it. The Pizza Company game is better for kids age 7 or 8 though. If you are curious about the Osmo learning system, I wrote a review here

When I was in high school my graphic calculator had a game called Dope Wars (it also goes by Drug Wars). Due to the content (i.e. illegal drug trafficking), it’s best for older kids. Essentially the game taught you how to buy low and sell high. Wired has a history of the game which is 40 years old this year. You can get a version on the Google Play store here.

Looking for more? Kimberly Palmer from NerdWallet covers four money conversations to have with your kids which come up from playing Minecraft and Roblox. My kids love these games, but I don’t understand them.

Final Thoughts on Teaching Kids about Money

Research shows that kids develop their money behavior from a young age. Unfortunately, financial literacy is not taught in many schools. That leaves it up to parents to fill in the gap. With the above resources, you can mix and match the education necessary to build a foundation for a great financial future.

How to Teach Your Teen Investing

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They say that best writers steal ideas from others and make them their own. I’m not sure about stealing, but I have to admit that my ideas come from the input of others. That can be from books, newspapers, blog articles, television, essentially any media. Usually, making them my own involves adding some of my own thoughts, opinions, and commentary. (On very rare occasions it involves adding comedy.) Occasionally, the idea is so good, I don’t have anything else to add – I’m simply pointing to it to make you aware of it. This is one of those cases.

Today I’m stealing borrowing from Jonathan of My Money Blog. I’ve been reading his blog for more than 15 years as it inspired me to create Lazy Man and Money. He flies under the radar in the personal finance space. However, his research and content is always top-notch. The latest example is a gem from NPR’s Planet Money. They’ve had a “summer school” where they taught investing at a basic level.

If you are new to investing, this will be a great listen. However, I agree with Jonathan that it would be a great course for my kids when they are teenagers. A small sliver of why I’m writing this today is to document it and hopefully see it a few years in the future to revisit with them.

How to Teach Your Teen Investing

Jonathan’s article, Weekend Listening: NPR Planet Money Summer School Investing Edition, lays out the course’s syllabus:

  • Episode 1: The Stock Market
  • Episode 2: Index Funds & The Bet
  • Episode 3: Smooth Spending & The 401K
  • Episode 4: Bonds & Becky With The Good Yield
  • Episode 5: Bubbles, Bikes, & Biases
  • Episode 6: Crypto & Commencement

I have to admit that I haven’t listened to the whole course. It’s not designed for the personal finance blogger who has been investing for thirty years. If you feel like you know the basics of investing, you may want to skip this course. That’s why I’m targetted it towards teens for the readers here. (That’s also an idea that I stole from Jonathan.)

You can get the whole podcast at Planet Money Summer School. I’m not a podcast person, but I’m guessing you can get it through the mobile app of your choice by searching for “Planet Money Summer School.” Each episode is a little more than a half hour long.

When you are done, there is a the final exam. I took the exam before listening to the episodes and only got 5 of 8 correct. The ones I got wrong were historical or based on nomenclature, where I knew the concept, but not the precise term for it. Give it a try and see how you do.

Is this the perfect way to teach investing? Nope. My kids are 7 and 8, so I have a few years before the teenage years. I don’t imagine they’ll want to listen to this podcast without some kind of carrot stick. However, I do believe it can be one of the tools in your toolbox if you want to teach your kids about money.

Looking for something else? This investing course is actually season 2 of the Planet Money’s Summer School. Season 1 covers Microeconomics concepts.

Maximizing Your Long-Term Investments

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[My alternative title for this article could be, “My Kids Roth IRAs’ Asset Allocation.” However, you don’t have to have a kid Roth IRA or a kid to take advantage of some of the ideas here.]

I’ve written about my kids’ Roth IRAs before. One of the benefits of dog sitting is that they can help, get paid, and legally save money for retirement that they’ll never have to pay taxes on. It’s not a lot of money, but a minimum of 50+ years of compounding is very powerful.

One thing we recently learned from Peter Thiel’s Roth IRA is that high-growth assets can make huge gains over time. Their dog money will never be compared to early shares of Paypal at a fraction of a penny, but it will still give them a tremendous leg-up in retiring early. Every dollar that they put in now will grow to $11.50 if it compounds at 5% – a reasonable number after inflation.

To get that 5% after inflation they’ll have to invest aggressively. They’ll have to take some risks, but with a balanced portfolio and 50-years to recover from the inevitable crashes, it shouldn’t be a problem.

It’s with this thought in mind that I decided it was time for me to formally create:

My Kids Roth IRAs’ Investments

The challenge is looking for high-growth investments for a long time in the future. However, I also want to be highly diversified as my crystal ball has been in the repair shop. This means that I’m going with a 100% stock portfolio. I’m not going to have any bonds, cash, or anything that I don’t think can reasonably return 8-10% over the long term.

For a number of years, I’ve read that small capital stocks perform a little better than large stocks. This makes sense since small capital stocks can double a lot easier than a very, very big company. The United States has had a great run, but I think international stocks have more growth potential over the next 50 years. They have better valuations if you use traditional methods like Shiller P/E.

For those two reasons, this portfolio will be weighted a little more towards those areas than many experts would typically suggest.

With that in mind, I focused on a set of six ETF that I believe get me to my goal. I specifically chose Vanguard (with one exception) because I know their expense ratios are going to be very, very low. I want my money working in the markets, not in managers. Those ETF are:

  • Vanguard Total Stock Market (Ticker: VTI)
    VTI is a staple for almost any investment portfolio. It is one-stop shopping for the United States stocks. Unfortuately, it has a lot of technology controling it, so remove that tech risk by diversifying with other US-based ETFs. Return Since inception 05/24/2001: 8.80%
  • iShares Core High Dividend ETF (Ticker: HDV) – The one non-Vanguard fund is a high-dividend ETF from iShares. Vanguard has a high-dividend ETF too, but a while back, for reasons I no longer remember, I like HDV more. In my view, this is a great way to remove tech risk from your portfolio. It’s got boring companies that simply make money and return it to shareholders. You won’t find Google in it, but you will find consumer staples, energy, health care, and utlities stocks. Return Since inception 03/29/2011: 10.34%
  • Vanguard Small-Cap ETF (Ticker: VB) – Remember my focus on the returns of small-cap stocks? This is a great way to “fix” the unbalanced nature of VTI. VTI weighs holdings by market cap, so the biggest companies dominate it. This gives me more small companies that hopefully can be more nimble and score big wins over 50 years. The index will cycle out companies appropriately over that time. Return Since inception 01/26/2004: 10.35%
  • Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US ETF (Ticker: VEU) – This ETF invests in stocks outside the United States. Like VTI, it’s a good core holding. However, I’ve found that it mostly focuses on developed countries and stocks. That’s not bad if that’s your goal, but I think emerging markets have real growth potential especially over the long haul. For that reason, I added the next ETF. Return Since inception 03/02/2007: 4.32%
  • Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF (Ticker: VWO) – This is a pure emerging markets play. Just like how HDV helped balance VTI, this helps balance my overall international exposure. Return Since inception 03/04/2005 – 6.99%
  • Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US Small-Cap ETF (Ticker: VSS) – This ETF is a mouthful, right? It’s a combination of VEU and VB… a mix of international small companies. One could reasonably leave this out of the portfolio, but I loved how it honed on the two things that I was looking to weigh more: small companies and international. I think this will have many companies that aren’t represented in VEU or VWO. Return Since inception 04/02/2009: 11.11%

It doesn’t seem like the VEU and VWO historical return is going to improve our gains. However, because they have better valuations, I feel more confident that they’ll perform better in the future while US stocks will trend back to historic norms.

My Kids Roth IRAs’ Asset Allocation

So I’ve got my six ETFs. The problem is solved, right? Nope, not exactly. I still have to figure what percentage of each to buy. I can’t just buy the same amount of shares of each. They have different prices. I don’t want to get into fractional shares. I also don’t want to leave too much cash uninvested.

I opened up my spreadsheet program and put the tickers in one column. Then I put the share prices in the next column. In the third column, I guessed the number of shares for each. Then I multiplied it across to get a total investment for each ETF. Then I added up all the totals and made sure that my kids would have enough to buy the ETFs. If I had too much money left over, I switched up my guesses on the number of shares to buy. However, I always tried to keep the ratios around where I wanted them to be.

Finally, I got some numbers that looked like they’d work. Was I ready to buy? Nope, not yet. I had to check my work.

I asked my friend if there was a tool that analyzed a group of ETFs and told you how diversified your portfolio was. She pointed me to a TD Ameritrade version of Morningstar’s X-Ray tool. I felt like an idiot, because I had written about Morningstar’s Instant X-Ray tool back in October of 2006. It’s the perfect tool for the job.

So I put the numbers in and found that I had too many large caps and more developed Europe stocks than I intended. I adjusted my guesses trading some VEU and VTI for small-cap stocks and got this result:

I think that result is beautiful. Information Technology is still the highest sector, but it’s only 16.5% of the portfolio. No single industry dominates the portfolio, so it is well-diversified from that perspective. Sixty percent of stocks in North America are more than I had originally wanted, but it’s not bad. Perhaps I could tweak it by changing my guess to add more to VSS and less to VB.

Finally, the stock-style box at the bottom looks good. It still has a little more large-cap stocks than small caps, but it is much more balanced than what most people have with a core holding of VTI. That holds so many large companies that the small companies can’t move the index. It’s also worth noting that the expense ratio is a low 0.07%. I’m not giving very much money to the managers at all.

How did the percentages work out to make this X-Ray? Because the kids have different amounts in their Roth IRAs, I don’t have the same exact percentage for each of them. If I did, I would be stuck buying fractional shares or not putting all the cash to work. It roughly turned out to be:

VTI – 17.5%
HDV – 5.3%
VB – 33%
VEU – 24%
VWO – 14.5%
VSS – 5.32%

Due to rounding, this doesn’t add up exactly to 100%, but it is close. So now, you can replicate something close to this with your own portfolio if you choose to do so.

Next Year’s Plan

The plan for next year would be to add REITs into the mix. I originally didn’t think REITs performed well enough to be included in a long-term high-growth plan, but they definitely can be included. So I’ll buy some VNQ (Vanguard’s main REIT ETF) next year. Also, I can work on the above point about including more small foreign companies instead of domestic ones.

Final Thoughts

You might have read all this and thought, “That’s great, but I don’t have kids” or maybe, “That’s great, but my kids don’t have Roth IRAs because I don’t have a dog sitting business.” You can come up with a hundred reasons why this specific circumstance doesn’t apply to you. However, I would argue that the process that I used can be useful for you and your asset allocation. You might have to add more bonds or change your objective, but the concept can work in any investment scenario.

I do have to leave you with one more final, final thought. I have a lot of fun with this stuff. I’m weird. You are likely not as weird as I am. I’m (attempting) to optimize this to an extreme level and it makes everything a little more complicated. Investing doesn’t have to be complicated though. Most people could put 65% of their money in VTI and 35% in BND (a Vanguard bond fund) and spend more time doing something they love. I never want to scare anyone away from investing, even if this article might be for more advanced investors.

Kids’ Camp Conundrum

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(I love alliteration.)

You may have noticed that my posting schedule has slowed down recently. Some of it is due to vacations. We’ve had two in the last two months. Some of it is due to the vast number of dogs we are sitting lately. However, this week it’s something new, a grueling summer camp schedule. (Me, my wife, and a kid all have colds too, but I wanted to focus more on the summer camp.)

Warning: This is a rant. I understand it may be off-putting to complain about child care when so many people have had little or none for over a year now. I ask that you read it through and think about the overall value. Then I think you’ll be able to see the conundrum.

Here’s what my day with the kids’ summer camp looks like:

8:15 – Leave the house to bring Kid 1 to camp by 8:30
8:42 – Return home to pick up Kid 2
8:47 – Leave with Kid 2 to bring him to the SAME CAMP
9:15 – Return home to start the day

During this time, I’m feeding dogs we are boarding, shopping, doing laundry, cooking, dishes, some light cleaning, clearing out emails, and miscellaneous stuff like a dog doctor appointment and a dentist appointment. I guess you’d say that typical errands you might do. Then:

1:15 – Leave to pick up Kid 1
1:45 – Return home
1:45-2:30 – Free time (45 minutes)
2:30 – Leave to pick up Kid 2.
3:00 – Arrive home with Kid 2.

It’s two hours of driving to accommodate the camp’s staggered drop-offs. They are doing that for COVID, but we are talking about kids, outside, wearing masks, in a highly vaccinated state (RI)… and in this case in the same family. I’m all for COVID precautions, but even the most stringent CDC guidelines would be against that.

That 9:15 to 1:15 block is four hours of productive kid-free time. We pay extra for “full-day” care or those end times would be even sooner (12:30 and 1 PM).

We had no way of knowing the full schedule of things when we signed up. The logistics of the staggered drop-offs were a surprise to us until before camp (too late for refunds). The camp offered us the ability to drop the kids off at 9:00 and pick them up at 1:30, but that’s still the same 4 hours of productive kid-free time. That “solution” saves driving, but it also means less camp for each kid or wasting the money we paid to extend the day for the second kid.

The price of the summer camp for the two kids (combined) is around $750 a week. That’s roughly $3,375 a month as the average month is 4.5 weeks. Or if you want to put in yearly terms, that $750 a week is $39,000 a year (750 * 52). That’s after-tax money, so it can be seen as requiring around a 50k salary for these 4 hours of productivity (or 4.5 hours of the time they would be in care – it would be unfair for me to hold the driving time against them if it was a standard drop-off).

So I think I’ve set the scene accurately with this camp… except for one thing… these are specialty camps within a camp.

One of them is a Snapology franchise, which is a robotics class using Lego WeDo. They build the Lego bricks and code how they work in small teams of 3 people. I’m a little jealous that I couldn’t be a part to be honest. My 8-year-old loves it! Every day he has a billion things to say about how great it is.

My 7-year-old is doing and art specialty. It’s not a fancy franchise, but it is the one that runs longer in the day time and is a little cheaper. The art camp seems to cover several different classical techniques from Monet to Van Gogh to Jackson Pollack. I’m not sure my 7-year-old is going to become an art history major based on this one-week class, but exposure to all these types of art is great for him. The only downside is that he caught our bug and missed a day – $75 down the tubes I guess. He isn’t as enthusiastic about loving it as his brother, but that’s not really his personality. He made it clear it was awesome.

I think you get the point, this camp is very inconvenient (for me), expensive, but the kids love it. There are other camps like this in the area. It’s a picture of privilege as you might in Newport, Rhode Island. We have the Tennis Hall of Fame and they have a camp. It runs for about 3 hours and it’s expensive. It wasn’t running this year due to COVID, so I can’t compare the numbers. Sailing goes for only 2.5 hours, but is only $170 for the week. We tried to get in that, but maybe it’s for the best we didn’t make the deadline. It’s a longer drive (30 minutes each way), so I’d be tempted to stay there and try to work off a mobile hot spot.

If I haven’t already lost you, none of this is where I wanted or expected us to be. All the above camps are a lot different than what I had growing up. I think my mother said she sent me to camp for about $25 a week. I built zero robots, but it was fine. Fine in the sense that it built character. The swimming lessons were at 9AM and the pool was ice cold. You could opt-out, but that meant missing free swim when it was 3 PM and a day in the sun has worn you out. They had arts and crafts and sports, which were (again) fine. We went on long hikes which were not fun, except for the destination, which was usually a great view or a dinosaur rock.

The Traditonal Camp

The equivalent to that near us is the local YMCA. They offer around 3-4 different types of camps with prices around $225 a week (give or take $20 depending on the camp). They have a gymnastics camp, a ninja camp (which seems to be boys gymnastics), sports, traditional, etc. For both kids combined it would be $450 a week or possibly a little less as members get a discount. (We found that membership in the past was worth it just for the camp discount.) The hours are 8 AM to 5 PM (but camp starts at 9 AM and ends at 4 PM). With this camp, I can get close to 8 hours of work in. There’s no staggered drop-offs that make our current camp difficult.

To put the math in perspective, here are the costs of the two camps per hour.

Current/Specialty: $750 for 45 hours (4.5 day * 5 days * 2 kids) = $16.66 per kid hour
YMCA: $450 for 75 hours (7.5 day * 5 days * 2 kids) = $6 per kid hour

It seems like our current camp costs more than 2.5x more than the YMCA camp. Building robots and specialty art is expensive.

This is a financial blog, so I have to crunch those numbers. What’s more difficult is to quantify the kids’ enjoyment of the camp. There is no excitement about the day at YMCA camp. It’s often a coin flip between fine and bad. They both complain that YMCA yells at them. The “swim” is more of a slip-and-slide than a pool. The quality of camp seems objectively very, very different.

Middle Ground?

I’m not sure if a middle ground exists. I’ve researched camps extensively a couple of years ago, but COVID closed everything but YMCA last year. (YMCA had no COVID cases all summer.) My research was mostly focused on what the kids were interested in. I eliminated the tennis camp very early because 3 hours was ridiculously too little. I was interested in the sailing camp, but they were too young at the time, so it was easy to dismiss.

So that’s the conundrum. I could also keep the kids at home, which comes at costs zero dollars. There is an opportunity cost though. With the kids at home, I don’t have much time to work. I know the kids wouldn’t mind this, but it’s also not the best thing for them.

Next spring I will look at camps more discerningly, but it might be a mix of all three: specialty, YMCA, and camp.

What do you think? Do you have kids and send them to camp? Is this conundrum (outside of the Newport stuff of sailing) something that you experience or is it just me?

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