Budgeting for Travel Sports: How to Plan for Every Expense Without Breaking the Bank

 Let’s talk about budgeting for travel sports, because this is a hot topic. It is a hot topic. You guys travel sports are killing your budget. They’re killing our budget. They’re killing your budget. And we know it because we’re in the thick of it ourselves.

But what I’ve been want, we’ve been wanting to do this podcast episode for a while, but recently what was really funny is I was at gymnastics waiting for, my daughter to be done. And the men were talking like, it’s so funny how many dads are at gymnastics that, that I get a chance to talk to?

And he was talking about how he told his wife Vanessa, he told his wife, if gymnastics ever clears $10,000 a year we’re out. And I was like, does he know? Oh I don’t know if it’s already, we’re already past that baby that’s gone. That one’s out. So anyway. When you consider everything in line and he was just so funny and I was like, that’s a really good idea. Like a hard line. Great plan. I just need you to look at a spreadsheet and make sure that you haven’t already hit that. But he’s, he was really funny. He said, my bottom line goes up faster than my top line. So he’s like a bus, a small business guy or he’s a consultant or something and he’s always What I try to do with businesses is get them to cut their expenses while they increase their.

Their their, revenue, income. Yeah. Yeah. And he’s like with these, because he has three girls and a wife, right? So he has three little girls and a wife. He’s oh, he’s totally on numbers. Yeah. I was like, and he’s I keep making more money, but they keep spinning it more like it keeps going up how much we’re spending every time and he can’t go as fast as them.

Yeah. So it was really cute. It was really funny. That’s funny.

 I think it reminds me of when Catalina first did travel volleyball last year. At the very beginning of the season we got the bill and it was, $3,200 for her to join the team. And I was like, oh, okay. She’s gonna raise the money.

Like we, I think we’ve talked about this, our girls they fundraisers. Yeah, they fundraisers and worked to be able to pay this. And then the mom was like, oh no. She’s you will spend about $10,000. And my jaw dropped. And I was like, I’m sorry, what? I said, what? Wait, what did you say? What? I’m sorry, what?

How? And then we started really thinking about the total cost. And I think that’s where people get tripped up, what is the total cost of this? Yeah. And I think that’s the problem. Yeah. And luckily I had you when, because we started gymnastics last year, you guys had done, you had the sticker shock of volleyball earlier that year and then then I was able to plan better. Oh, to help you. Easy ea you in for gymnastics. And we were like comparing costs and stuff and anyway, the point is there’s a lot that goes into it. We, it’s not that we don’t want you to be able to do it. Yeah. We wanted to stop stressing you out. I remember you had the client that had cheer and she was always so stressed about Yeah.

How they were gonna make it happen. We wanna plan for it, we wanna own it. It’s bougie. It’s expensive, but it’s fun and it’s exciting. There’s so much good of it, but let’s make it part of the budget. Let’s plan for it so that we can feel really good about it. So I’m gonna say really quick, Shannon and I had T-shirt or sweatshirts made.

Yeah, we did. And we had, the girls’ names on the front it says volleyball on the back it says sponsored by budget and gymnastics. I have, oh, gray, let’s, she’s got one for gymnastics. And it says, sponsored by budget besties. And on our little tagline it says, you can budget that bougie. Volleyball life, like in gymnastics, right?

Yeah. So the idea is that we want you to be able to do this. It is so fun and exciting. You have the best time. And it’s so much quality time that I can spend with my daughter and my family when they come. But we wanna do it better. Yeah. Yeah. And so we’re gonna start by just thinking about.

So it’s just like that Mom, I love them all so much. So let me tell you about my beginning of my volleyball life. So we got the same bill ’cause we are in the same club your daughter was in last year. And then similar, same bill. And then literally within two weeks they were like, oh and we’re all gonna get warm up separate ’cause it’s separate ’cause of her club.

And then also there’s this app that we’re gonna get to track our volleyball stuff. And then if we all could go out to dinner once a month and I was just, and they just kept spending my, they kept. By text message, spending my money faster than I could budget for you guys. I was like, I am gonna need a comprehensive list so that I can actually try to make this happen.

I’m not this kind of person that’s just here’s a hundred there and a hundred there. That’s not how my budget works, y’all. So let’s think about, let’s talk about all the different things that go with travel sports. Those club fees are, that’s just the beginning, y’all, and it’s so cheap for a beginning, right?

Yeah. You’re like, oh, I can totally do this. Yeah, again, like Shayna said from the beginning, there was added costs. Yeah. So we really just wanna look at what is the total cost of this going to be? And for examples it’s, the club fees and the team fees for you say coaches fees or whatever.

I think some uniform fees. Travel costs. Yeah. Those are not cheap. Especially if you are going to places just double your original bill. Yeah. And so for us, we had to actually plan and pay for all of our hotels back, like far, four or five months ago. Yeah. So we know those, we knew those costs upfront, which was great.

It wasn’t like we booked in, then we got there and then, oh my, oh by the way, your hotel is $3 a night or something like that. We knew that. We knew that right at the beginning. So just, we want, and it’s not just the price of the hotel. It is price of parking at the hotel, because that’s a thing.

Oh, that’s a thing. There is so much more involved in that. Hold on, let’s add to it. What we did this last week, we, because we both went to the same tournament, different weekends, we paid for parking at the hotel and we paid for parking at the event. So did we. So let’s loving that. For me, we loved all of that for all of us.

And so if you’re not gonna walk, which I did have a mom, she was super smart. She, they got a hotel that was in walking distance of the venue. So that. They, and that hotel somehow didn’t have parking. I was like, where is this magical place that you’re coming from? But they didn’t have parking fee and then they didn’t have to pay to park ’cause they could walk to the venue.

But anyway, the point being, you’re gonna have this club tease team club and team fees that they tell you originally. The next thing we’re gonna look at is travel. It’s gonna be gas to get there if you’re driving. There’s gonna be flights to get there. We went to Miami, listen, we went on Spirit Airlines.

It was extremely cheap. It was totally doable. And then they also, they were really sweet. They let ala go in the PI in the cockpit and get a little picture for her first flight. But then also once we got there, had to get a rental car. Or maybe you’re gonna pay Ubers. Like Vanessa, Vanessa said, hotel here stay.

And then, by the way, let’s not forget to add all the taxes onto that hotel bill that they live. And by the way, because you’re paying in cash, you gotta remember this. You’re gonna have a deposit for almost everything. You’re gonna have a deposit. So that’s gonna have to be built into making sure you got everything going on.

And then the next thing you wanna look at is private lessons, or you don’t listen. If you don’t you’re fine, but we’re just not there yet. I was completely blindsided last year when my daughter played at Club Ball. We went, I was like the first tournament and I’ve started. Listening to these conversations with these other moms, and apparently every other kid had private lessons going on.

My kid didn’t, so then I took that as like a hint oh I guess I’m supposed to be doing this. If my daughter doesn’t do this, she’s gonna be behind. Yeah. So we did probably almost weekly private lessons with another coach to keep her in line, if not just getting better every single week to be able to stay on this national team.

She was on the. The highest volleyball team that she could make in her age group, in that club. And so I wanted to make sure that she wasn’t falling behind compared to all her other girls. I, again, I don’t know if that’s trying to keep up with the Joneses or what, but I wanted to make sure we were doing our part if all these other moms and all these other kids were doing quote unquote their part, I did not wanna be the kid.

My daughter did not want the anyone. I was like not doing great. And none of this, we’re not judging any of this. No. This is all based on what you wanna do. So we just wanna make sure we’re, the list is comprehensive enough that you’re not, like Vanessa said, blindsided. When another class comes.

So the other, like I was, I told you. Gymnastics is a big old commitment even at a small level. My, my daughter was doing eight hours of gymnastics a week, so four days, two hours. Don’t, I’m surprised here. They were doing privates too. Everybody, but my daughter was doing private lessons as well, even though they, she was nine and are doing eight hours a week.

Okay. That’s the level we’re at. Which again, does not mean that you have to do that. It’s just if you think that you’re gonna do it, let’s go ahead and put it in the budget. We just don’t want you to be surprised. And along with that. Maybe there’s camps or like certain sessions or ’cause we have a local lady that does volleyball.

It’s kinda like private, it’s like semi-private lessons basically. And so when she has one, we, we wanna see if our girls can go. So we need to budget for those as well. And then the camps that they’re gonna do, those are gonna come along. And if they’re related to the sports, you might as well start figuring them in now.

Yeah. Especially so for volleyball, they, their season runs, high school runs usually summer. Through October, and then club runs November through probably about June. And then all of these summer camps for volleyball happens in June and July. So if your child, whatever season of sport they’re doing the off season, they will have a ton of camps available for their, for your kid.

So if you want your kid or your kid wants to or whatever, if you’re trying to factor that in, don’t forget about those. No, really don’t. Like our boys are going to basketball camp. We did forget about that ’cause we had never planned on that. Like we didn’t know. This is a school sport that’s not even travel y’all.

It’s fine. So we get to add that to our savings buckets this year. Yeah. Okay, so the next one is gear and uniforms. And this is so variable to the sport and variable to what life kid is living because maybe they’re in a growing season and they can’t reuse stuff. Maybe you never thought they were gonna play baseball again, so you sold their bat.

And then somebody talked ’em into playing. So now they have no bat again. So that’s just a personal story, but Okay. But when it comes to e even this see if this checks, you bought all black for the one team because everybody wanted to wear all black. Whatever knee pads and elbow pads.

And now the other team wants to be wear all white. So now you have to get all white. Okay, this is a life we’re living. Or if you’re like my son who’s can I wear these soccer plates for baseball? I said, I don’t think so. No. But I don’t think so. Neither one of us know, but I think we have to get new cleats.

And so wait. And the secret hack is you just have your best friend, have her do all the same sports that your kids are gonna do, and they say, what do we buy? And she sends you directly to Amazon Link. And that’s the secret double hack. I just wanna let you know. Our friendship works out well.

Yeah. So anyway, so you, but who knows what other gearing uniforms you might need. But yeah, so if your uniforms are not included in your club fee costs, you need to make sure you look at that. And like for Catalina, she has three day tournaments, and so her uniform package included two pairs of spandex.

Don’t you know. And she’s never gonna listen to this. So I can say it on here, but don’t you know she peed her spandex ’cause she screamed so loud when she was excited that her team won. So don’t you know we needed that extra pair of spandex, y’all. Oh my God. So I’m just saying plan for it. Yeah.

Just know that those well simple, you’re gonna need stuff might break. Like how many shoes have you gone through for basketball this year? Four. I know you were frugal or. Smart enough to get ’em replaced, but like you might need a new pair of shoes in the middle of the season. Yeah. And you didn’t know.

And the other thing I was gonna say is when it comes, you might have different gear like, practice gear that you have at home. Like those nets that lacrosse and baseball and volleyball. Everybody rebounders. That’s what I was going for. That’s might be something like, there might be different things that you need to bring in Multi-sport.

Yeah. Yeah. Or just for your sport. Something that you need at home to supplement whatever they’re doing. Oh yeah. I bought that too. Yeah. For Chris. That was a Christmas present okay. So the next thing is like tournament fees and admission because you pay so much for them to. Play on the team, but you also have to get into the event that you’re trying to watch them play in.

Which is not cheap this weekend. That’s not, it was $47 a person for us to go, and there was three of us. So that was a pretty penny. I thought that was cheap for three days. I was like actually impressed at Orlando. No, ’cause we paid $20 a person for a day for gymnastics. All I know is it kept going up every time I went to a different gymnastics meet, it was more but either way, it doesn’t matter. You are, yes. You already paid for them to do the thing. Yes. You’re already paying for parking. Yes. You’re, you are like already giving your heart and soul, but you’ll also pay an entrance fee, so don’t forget it.

Yep, yep. And the next thing is team bonding events. So again, this was something that I think Shane and I happened immediately after they made the team. It was like, oh, by the way, we’re gonna do. Multiple team bonding events, which is great. But also then we need 20 bucks. 20 bucks a person for this, whether it’s sleepovers, whether it’s, I think last year Kelly and his team did a escape room, right?

And then they have pizza or whatever. I know this year she did Christmas event too, so it was just, don’t be surprised you made the team. That’s great. But there is this other cost called team bonding events that happen. That reminds me of the first, before the first meet, the, one of the moms said.

Okay, I’ll do the goodie bags this weekend. And I was like, oh, what, is there an, there’s an expectation that each meat mom does a different mom does the goodie bags. Okay, great. Let’s add that to the budget that nobody told me about. So anyway. You might, if you do goody bags or you want to like, and that’s the other thing, maybe it’s something you love and you want to do it but you feel like in the moment you can’t find the money or whatever, set it aside so that, you have the money set aside for Yeah. For stuff like that. And sometimes I know it’s more rec stuff, but maybe. The team snacks or like you’re in charge of bringing snacks or whatever for the girls.

I think I saw at, yeah, I saw some really good bags like that for for at the tournament we were at. That that they had gotten for the girls, which was really cute. I made last year for Kelly, the school team, I had them all, I made a bag tags for their little bags with their picture and their name and stuff on it.

And and that was a, I used my own personal money to do that, but it’s a gift. And it’s something that you buy them and it’s something that you really don’t, you. We usually don’t expect. But this whole like goodie bag thing that happened last year. So this year on kale’s club volleyball team, we’re not doing that.

But last year it was like almost like an expectation that where a different mom would pick up and do that. And we’re not talking about cheap goodie bags. Y’all we’re talking about like super bougie, like blankets and pillows and custom cookies made. Like they were, I felt like I had an expectation to live up to.

Yeah. I don’t think I met it. That’s okay. That’s okay. It is okay. It’s gonna be okay. And so we are talking about this like it’s travel sports, but. We have to do this for our son’s high school sport and they go to a private school. So I have to imagine it’s probably even worse for a public school because it’s bigger and all that stuff.

Like our boys, they, the expectation there is that every away game they go out to eat afterwards. And that nice for them, that’s so I feel love for them for that. So anyway, what we’re saying is food and snacks, those are not cheap. There, you’re if, especially for travel, you’re not at home, so you can’t rely on that as much.

So you wanna make sure you’re budgeting, like you can have rules. You can say, look, we’re going out once. A tournament, or we’re doing you can stick to something. But you do want to have the budget for it. And especially like for my daughter on Saturday, we literally got there at 10 30 and we left there at 10 30 at night.

So we were there. Super long time and we needed to make sure that she had healthy food available in her body so that way she could play for that long and sustain her body for that long. Most of these places allow you to bring or have the athlete can bring food in. So you wanna make sure that.

You’re not just buying the food there. ’cause the food there is gross, super expensive gross. It’s gross and super expensive. So double whammy there. But also go ahead and plan on packing good healthy food for your athletes so that way they can stay energized. Yeah. And we’ll just go ahead and mention the snacker boxes.

Yes. Because. I feel like I could look at picture for some reason. I can look at pictures of snacker boxes like all day. I’d be like, oh, I know I was setting shade on my pictures. Oh, I have so many pictures. And but this is a great way to hopefully reign in some of the expense of feeding your athlete.

’cause it’s not cheap. Let’s just add that. Little bit to this travel sport. They’re working out a lot. They’re already like their metabolism’s already on fire ’cause of their age. So we need to feed them and they cost a lot of money to feed. So let’s just plan for it. Yeah. All right.

The next thing is merch.

Yeah. Listen. How much money did you spend this weekend? I didn’t spend any. Oh. ’cause it was all ugly. She wanted one, but they were sold out, so I oh no. I’m so sad. Okay, so we, you, first of all let’s put this out there. You do not have to say yes to merch all the time. I think if there’s one tournament for the season that, always has the best merch, the best design or whatever it is make that the expectation for your athlete to say, look, this is the one. Or you get to pick one tournament where you want one, one sweatshirt. We have now been to I think four or five sweatshirt, four or five tournaments, and I, there are a couple girls on the team that get one every single time.

How can you wear that many sweatshirts? Tell me more. My daughter cannot fit any anymore sweatshirts. In her. In her, yeah, exactly. In her closet. We’re not cheap. But I just saying that expectation, you don’t have to say yes every single time. And also hack here we bought stuff for our daughters, but then we gave it to ’em for Christmas.

So we bought the merch and then they got it for Christmas, so it was a double whammy. But I didn’t ask, but I did spend $76 when you were there. Yeah, lots of grand on that. Was it the one sweatshirt? It was a sweatshirt. And I think I got her. A pin. I got her a Sunshine Classic pin. Oh. It was her first big tournament, so it was fun.

But Vanessa had warned me. See what I’m telling you, I did the hack is to have the friend doing all the things and then she can tell you what to do. And then this is just random, but clips and clips are making. The rounds. So they started at cheer. Now they’re have invaded volleyball and I guarantee you we will be bringing them to gymnastics.

This yeah, this fall. And so don’t worry about it if you don’t know about it. Don’t just live in oblivion. But once you see them Oh, so fun. You’re gonna have clothes plans and you’re gonna decorate ’em and they’re gonna be so cute. I made months to the volleyball moms and dads this weekend and I clipped them and it was so fun.

Yeah. I’ve already spent probably about $75 on clip. So I’ve bought already 300 clips and letter beads for the kids to hot glue on them so they can make words. So that was an added expense this year that I did not expect. And also hair glitter I bought for the girls to put in their hair oh yeah, that’s another hair paraphernalia, I’m gonna call it.

It’s all about the hair because gymnastics was another level volleyball is a level of creativity and warrior braid, warrior princess braids that I love. Gymnastics is a no hair’s allowed to move game. And so we have a lot of different items that can help us with that. And then obviously the hairspray.

Glitter was another fun one, so Oh my gosh. We’re not done spending your money yet. Because we still have coach gifts. Don’t forget about coach gifts because. Again, the expectation. We’re not saying you have to do it, but if you want to do it, if you wanna be part of it, then let’s go ahead and plan for it.

Yeah. All right, then unexpected. Cause let’s just think about if you lost something, AKA, a water bottle that your best friend found the next weekend when she was there in Orlando. You don’t, she, Shana didn’t have to buy another one. Actually, what happened was is I bought Shayna’s daughter a water bottle for Christmas, and my son and I were walking by the lost and found.

Which was the tournament that Shayna was at a week before. And I was like that water bottle looks familiar. What water? Gosh. So I texted her and I was like, are we missing something? Anyways, yes, when your child loses things. My daughter lost her brand new warmup when you talk about buying warmups. She had just worn it for the first time.

Left it in New Orleans last year. I was super pumped about that. If your club schedules extra tournaments, midseason, that you weren’t expecting injury expenses, I’m gonna raise my hand very high for that. Did that this year, that’s still costing us a couple thousand dollars. Love. We’re still love that.

Super pumped about yeah. Yes. Anyway, so we just wanted to think let’s brainstorm everything that could cost us money that we can think of. And if you have something that we missed him, please let us know. Email us at hello budget best hello@budgetbesties.com in case we for forgot anything.

Okay. That’s great. We have found a way to spend every dollar that you make. Let’s plan for it. Now. Let’s figure out how to put all of that. Not overwhelming at all. Costs that we just discussed, how we put it into a plan and a system to be able to pay for it. The, what you wanna do here is put it into categories.

So I think we categorize everything out up top as far as what costs go where. Okay. That’s fine. But now the best way to do this is to open up a separate travel sports savings account. Okay. So this is a specific account just for. Your travel sports. And it’s usually if you have one kid or even if you have two kids that are like very big on a sport, it’s probably gonna be that one sport.

So like for Melanie, she’s not gonna ever play like travel soccer. Oh no. It’s always gonna be travel volleyball. For alet it’s always gonna be gymnastics. Yeah. So you wanna open up a separate account and if we’re all about the high yield, if you can get a savings account that has a, has some sort of return for you, we’re gonna want that.

And you’re gonna go back and list out everything that we said. What do you think you’re gonna spend on all of those categories per travel support? In a year. That’s really what we’re going for. What do I spend in a year? So just add ’em up. So I spend, the fees are two are 3000. I usually spend about 4,000 in travel expenses.

I spend about 500 in gear. Like whatever it is, just start listing out the total, the amounts for each thing that we said, and then you’re gonna add that all up and you’re gonna get yourself a magical annual number that you’re gonna be really excited about.

So once you’re doing that, then you get to break that up generically. We’re gonna break it up by 12, right? Yeah. The idea is we should be able to set aside a certain amount every month. And then the money will always be there for whatever comes. Yeah, if you have a short amount of season, a short amount of time before the season starts, then you might have to go like five months.

You might have to divide that month that amount by and then move on. So I had a client last year who did, had two daughters in cheer, and she said we spent about 20,000, actually, I think it was like $24,000 and cheer for both of them with all the competitions and everything. So that was an easy number to divide.

So basically what we would do is. For the season. ’cause we were in, we were like mid-season of cheer when we, when she first signed up for coaching. So in the moment we were planning to pay for everything in cash, but we were also planning ahead to be able to pay next year and save for it.

So that equates to, if you say okay. Off season, in season, everything included. I spend $24,000 a year for this sport. Then easy math, you’re gonna divide that by 12. So you need to be saving $2,000 a month to be able to, put in that savings bucket. So next year you, you always will have the money available for you when that, when those dues are come, I guess you could say.

Yeah, and sometimes you can get discounts. What’s gonna be cool about this is you’re gonna have a lot of money, okay? Girl, yes. You’re gonna have a lot of money set aside. You might be able to get a discount if you pay fees in full. You might be able to, you’re definitely gonna be able to pay less if you book travel earlier.

So between your hotel, your rental, and your flight, if you’re gonna actually have the money in there to book it which is gonna be great so that you can save money. It’s gonna be great. All so much. Great. Yeah. And then, if you, okay, once you look at that list and you’re like, okay, how can I cut some costs?

If you’re looking at it, it seems really steep and you’re not, you’re unsure about it, think about ways that you can cut costs. We have a couple parents on our team right now whose husbands don’t come to all the tournaments because they’re working, so therefore they. They bunk up. And so we have, they’re sharing hotel rooms, they’re sharing Ubers, they’re sharing our car rentals and all of that.

They have actually encouraged us to sign up with all the hotel reward points. So every different hotel we stay at, we try to sign up for their reward points and use that as we are continuing to book these hotels year after year for volleyball. Yeah. And we do privates with another person. So it say, instead of having to pay 50 bucks, I pay 30 bucks every time, which is.

Something you guys like she’s saying pairing up with somebody else. Yeah. To do double like a shared private. Yeah. And then obviously we were talking about bringing your own food. That’s another one. And then, also we talk about all the time if you can’t cut costs, at least have your kids help.

Have them do a lemonade stand or do something. Do something to make themselves some money to contribute toward. This passion that they have and the way they wanna do it. There’s the bottom line, baseline way that we could be doing travel sports. But if you want to do, you want all this merch, you want all this going out with your team and all this fun stuff, let’s have you contribute a little bit to that girl.

Yes, girl or boy or whatever they can earn some money and contribute to make it a little easier for you. I also think it’s really stressful. So if you’re like in the moment always stressed out about an expense that you knew was coming but you were hoping didn’t but came anyways, and then you’re having to either Venmo somebody money or you’re swiping your debit card or whatever, or even your credit card ’cause you can’t fund it, like how much better are you gonna feel knowing that you’ve been saving for this month after month and you can confidently pay with your debit card or cash.

And know that everything is funded and so what? So you plan for 24,000 this year, only spend 23,000, roll that thousand dollars over baby because next year, fees are only gonna go up. Hotel costs are only gonna go up. So if you always know that travel fund account is getting funded. All the time, you’re never gonna run outta money for it.

Yeah. And we that reminded me when you said that if you are like, I can’t remember everything I was spent, go to your Venmo because you get to play so many people Venmo when you are doing this. So that will trigger your memory for some things. Yeah. Okay. And then here’s the deal. If you’re just floundering right now.

Wait till this season’s over. Yeah. Hopefully it is a season. Take the time off the, 13 seconds you get off between the next round and make a plan and start. Then start for the next season with your, make your buckets, make your plan, make your money, and start that. If you really just feel like there’s too much right now, just save this episode and go do it when you have a minute to think.

Yeah. ’cause having something saved is better than having nothing saved. Yeah. So even if you only have a thousand dollars saved by the beginning of the next season, it is still something. Yeah. So you’ll get there. All right. So we just want you to open your account today. Get the you can get, we have a free like brainstorming budget travel sports worksheet.

Yeah. For you. You just go to budget best.com/. Sports and just start brainstorming it today. Open the separate savings account, put $5 over there and call it the name of the sport or the person or whatever. And then do the budget, do the worksheet and start funding it. And if you are in our Facebook group, let’s start like a whole thread over there on what is what do you pay when you have travel sports and let’s help jog people’s memories.

Yeah. And so we can really help and support each other on this amazing journey