Has the Economy Impacted Your Figure Skating Budget?

The biggest impact I’ve noticed is the competition fees. Our fee for a Non-Qualifying FS event at Regionals is $130. I think that is ridiculous!!!!!!

Ouch! $130 is a lot!

I think that my rink has increased prices as well.

That’s a good point, Isabellem1998!

I know that the clubs in our area have increased ice fees. Our club went from $10/hour for members to $11. Our walk-on rate is now $14/hour.

Another club charges $15/hour for walk-ons.

Whoa, $130 for NON-Qual? That was always the fee for Qualifying, I thought NON was only $85 or something?!?! Wow. We’ve gone to three Regionals (Upper Great Lakes) but always as a Qualifying. Not going this year, it’s pretty far away. We almost always end up living closer to the Eastern Great Lakes Regionals but that’s not our Region… :~(

There are several clubs in my area (New England) that are struggling to survive. I think our club has cut down on the number of sessions this year, but the price remained the same. A couple of clubs are down to one FS session per week. A few places have gone up by $1 per session, and ice cost around here is high to begin with, anywhere between $15 – $20 for walk-on. We haven’t had to cut back on training, but we haven’t been able to increase the time either.

Yes, I guess it has…my middle dd no longer gets lessons (she was too much of a time waster), they are not on the synchro team anymore (besides tuition, there was also competition weekend costs, uniforms etc), and we are actively trying to re-use dresses etc. So, yes, I guess we are trying to cut back.

Indeed we have felt the pinch, my husband always works 2 jobs- his main job which can sometimes be 60 hours a week – and he owns his own business as well. He even had a temporary third job for awhile! Our ice time has increased just at the beginning of August – luckily only $1 an hour, but I guess even that adds up in a month. In the days when my daughter was competing more often she skated 8 to 9 hours a week with 1 1/2 hours of lesson time with her coach. Sometimes there was an extra 1/2 hour with a secondary coach as well. Now, partly because finances are tight and because she is not competing as much she only skates 4 to 5 1/2 hours a week with only one hour of lesson time with the main coach, we’ve had to cut the secondary coach out for financial reasons. We have however started to pay for an ice dance coach once a week, or at least once every other week. Our ice time still isn’t too bad, it is now $9 an hour but the other rink we sometimes go to is $14 an hour! I truely do not know what we would have done had my daughter had that true “one in a million” figure skating potential, making it beyond Regionals, traveling around the country for competitions, etc. Real training would have been far beyond our means! We have also noticed a few skaters disappearing from the rink – or at least not skating as often. In any economic down turn the extra curricular activities are often the first to go… We know many people who have had to cut back on the unneccesary things. :~(

Hubby and I are lucky to both work full time, and we dont have kids yet so we have some discretionary income. Haven’t had to feel the pinch too much myself. In fact, last week I bought an additonal 10 punch card for 30 min freestyle ice, becuase sometimes I do feel like practicing half hour more after my lesson ends, and paying $9 a pop is not very economical. The punch card doesn’t expire so I don’t lose out in case I don’t feel like extending my practice some days.

Skate school starts after our freestyle session, and it used to be a madhouse at the rink side as the parents and young skaters gather to lace up skates and wait for their turn on the ice. I definitely noticed that the crowd isn’t as big as seasons past. I also noticed the regulars in my freestyle session not show up anymore, hopefully they have simply switched to another day or time rather than dropping out. I have also spoken to some coaches who mentioned that they lost some kids who were taking private lessons that ended up switching to group lessons again, or if they were supplementing their group lesson with privates, just decided to do without the privates.

I am a sucker for figure skating practice attire (be it dresses or jackets or pants), but now I only buy during the web sales. I am happy our club didn’t raise the membership fee also.

I have noticed entry fees increasing a lot in our area, which I know has prevented some skaters from competing in multiple events or even going to regional events. I have also seen a lot of costume sharing/swapping/renting going on at my rink as well. I know a lot of people who are planning on cutting back on lessons this year too, so I have seen the effects of the economy slowly effecting skaters at our rink. I have been lucky to have parents who will help me out with skating costs so while I have made some cutbacks it hasn’t been as bad for me as for some of the other families in the area.

By the time we paid for both kids, just two practice ices, our bill was over 400.00 just for NQ too :{ Practice ice is 25.00 for 30 minutes ….

For a moment, I thought you were paying $25 for 30 minutes of regular club practice ice. *whew* I nearly had a heart attack.

Still, $25 for 30 minutes of competition practice ice is absurd.

ITA on the extra event. I used to have my daughter do a compulsory spin event or something, but not anymore– it is way too much between entry and extra coaching.

lol they would be playing soccer then!!
Its at a rink with two sheets of ice, and they will have lots of ice open.I think we will do more off ice this year, or I could drop a few hundred on ice alone!I know the LOC is trying to cover costs, but WOW!

My club is increasing costs too, but not by much. However, it makes a difference for monthly passes. A lot of people still sign up though, especially little kids.
That, and:
Nova: “Mom, can I have a new dress/tracksuit/whatever?”
Nova’s Mom: “Not at the moment, honey, but the dresses/tracksuits/whatever you have still fit you fine.”
Nova: “Ok, and I need new skates.”
Nova’s Mom: ” … [frown] [sigh] We’ll see what we can do.”

Our season fee has went up slightly, but our surrounding rinks have went even more. Well their actual fees have not went up, but they now have a mandatory fundraising amount – I call that a fee increase.

We have sat down with dd’s coach and talked about goals knowing there is a budget (there always has been, but this year I am trying to adhere to it). Result is dd will focus on her skills and freestyle rather than competing at distant competitions. We may take in 2-3 or small, inexpensive ones so she keeps in the mindset of competing.

Our rink raised contract ice a bit, but not much. We are really lucky that way. I see other people’s ice cost around the country, and there’s just no way we’d be able to keep my daughter in skating at her current level without me taking on another part-time job or leasing my backyard for a cell phone tower or something.

We’ve always been a bit frugal to make this work, and so far *knock wood* we’re holding steady. I just got a great deal on a costume for Regionals on eBay, and we will sell some other costumes that I otherwise might have help onto.

We haven’t done the extra competition events in a long time – spins, compulsory, etc. Ugh…I think Intermediate level with two programs to pay for and costume will be a shock, so I’m in no hurry for us to get to that level.

We did end up doing a lot of tests this year, and that got to be pricey. Luckily, the various rinks in our area have a reciprocal arrangement so that you don’t have to pay some of the extra fees to test. But argh, one retry on the Pre-Juv MIF was like a knife in my pocketbook.

Actually, the hardest hit for us every year is the skates. I try to put money aside, but never quite make it. Trying to get hundreds of dollars out of almost nowhere required some generous grandmothers and a lucky break that the model we wanted was sold out, so we got last year’s model at about $150 off.

Yup! We cut back on dd’s lesson time and ice time earlier this year. We had to. Dd is back up to her regular lesson time and is spending more time on the ice, but it isn’t easy. Dd is getting to a level where she could use extra help with jumps and such, but we are not in a financial situation to do that. I feel bad about it too but the fact is, we cannot afford additional coaching. Maybe in a few months… but not now. Maybe if dd shows enough interest in having the additional lessons, she can use Christmas money to pay for them. I will leave that up to her.

As for ways that we cut figure skating costs… dd helps out on learn to skate! For every session she helps out on, she earns a freestyle session, during a 6 week LTS session, she has the potential to earn 12 freestyle sessions. That saves me money and allows her to contribute to paying for skating. I think it is a valuable lesson for her too. We also use club ice. The first hour is paid for with her annual membership and we can opt to pay the walk on fee, should she stay for the second hour.

I also crystal her comp dresses, I try to style her hair for competitions and re-sell outgrown items to help cover the cost of new dresses and skates. I am also learning to sew. We video her competitions vs. buying the videos at competitions and I opt out of show videos to save money too. I admit, I would love to have videos of her shows, but I would rather take the money I save from not buying them and put it into lessons.

The economy definately stinks!

It was $135 for a non-qualifying event at Regionals here. Crazy!!

Our club cut back sessions too. I think they may have also raised the prices. Lousy economy doesn’t help ice skating at all!

Sure it has. It’s had a lot of impact on my training as I freelance as a web designer and the work just isn’t out there. Everyone is cutting back. Tie that in with the fact that I had to pay for physical therapy for 2 locked vertebrae over the summer and I’m learning to drive (lessons = expensive!) and you’ve got a bit of a damper on the skating schedule. I think I’m going to have to start skating without necessarily taking lessons (I used to skate 4/5 days per week and have at least 30mins per day, but with university starting next week it’s going to be more like 2 sessions per week and 1 lesson). Very good idea for q post keep em comin’!

I agree on the testing- earlier this year, both girls tested (one pre juv MIF and one intermediate MIF) and neither passed- ARGH, I had to pay tests and the coach for two retry—yuck. And I forgot that the 9 yo took and passed Preliminary, Pre-Juv and Juv Freestyle all this year too.

I’d love to see the ebay buy- dd’s unitard cost me $500— I insisted that make it so it is likely to fit next year too- even if she uses it for intermediate short.

Our rink raised fees last year, but not this year (fo far). They started a new weekday class so parents can take a class on one side of the rink while their tot takes a lesson on the other side. That opened two additional adult classes each week and brought in revenue the rink would not otherwise not have had.

I’d say our rink has more adult skaters than ever show up at the weekday adult public skate. A group of freestyle adult skaters (mostly FS5+), many of whom could not currently afford private lessons, got the rink to assign a high-level coach to one of the classes they would not otherwise have taken. It was a win-win: the rink took in additional revenue and the skaters got face time with a coach whose private lesson fees (for most of them) would be unaffordable at this time.

So yes, times are tough, but I have to hand it to our rink for doing a very nice job adapting to the times.

My husband makes the money in our house – and I do all the work, lol. He makes the same money now as he did before the economy went south. That’s because he’s in the military. However, dd’s skating has increased by a day and coach fees went up because we increased dd’s time with her. So now I have to budget differently. I’m making my attempts to coupon and get my regular budget down so that it brings more money over to skating. I’m crossing my fingers that it will work!

Good luck!!!!!!!