10/3/2022 - Excel is your Friend!

Now that we are fully into the dance season and our schedules have been set, competition and convention schedules have been emailed out, it's time to start budgeting! Most people HATE this part, but I oddly enjoy it. I've figured out a method that works great for me and my family.

Without budging, I would not be able to afford the dance season. My daughter not only does competition dance for her studio (she has 17 dances this season), but she is also an apprentice with a traveling convention/competition, which means more hotel fees and travel fees.

Our fees for any given dance season can run anywhere from $15,000 and up. Shhh, don't tell Dad (JK, he knows)

Now, let me tell you, my husband and I both have decent jobs, but we are by no means rolling in the money. We run a pretty tight ship when it comes to our budget and we account for pretty much every penny.

Most of our fees come from the following:

• Costumes

• Choreography

• Monthly Tuition

• Competition entry fees

• Convention fees

• Master Classes

• Shoes, tights, dance socks, etc

• Travel fees

  • Hotel

  • Gas

  • Food

The best tool I've found is good old-fashioned Excel.

I use excel to track how much we have spent, how much we have left to pay, and what the year is going to cost us. This will help me make any adjustments we may need to make to the next year's load. I also use this as a schedule of what we have when.

I set my spreadsheet up like below.

I use a lot of formulas to auto-add things. I will list them below:

Cell D11: =sum(D2:D10) This formula will add all the fees for competition and conventions.

Cell L11: =sum(L2:l10) This formula will add all the fees I pay for my hotels

Cell N15: =sum(O2:O13) This will be the total for tuition paid

Cell R9: =sum(R2:R8) Total for custom fees

Cell R18: =sum(R11:R17) Total for Choreography Fees

Cell U14: =sum(U2:U13) Total for Lesson Fees ( i will sometimes split this up between who she does the lesson with since she takes lessons with a few different coaches)

Cell C18: =sum(C15:C17) Total for Other events and expenses.

I will then take the total of all the items above for a grand total of the entire season. I typically will put it around cell J14. the formula looks like this =sum(D11:L11:N15:R9:R18:U14:C18)

I have thought about making this excel a downloadable document with all the formulas already formatted. If anyone is interested in using this please let me know and I will be more than happy to do this.

As you can see, I also have the dates, locations, hotels, and other important information on the spreadsheet. I also list if the event is required or not. My daughter attends a lot of events that are not required of her, just extra training, and extra competitions. I also like to log in if I have booked the hotels. I typically try to book the host hotels and use my member rewards to get discounts (if you need more information, please visit my post about hotels and accounts linked here)

I know this blog was probably not the most exciting blog, but VERY necessary. You have no idea! You don't have a season if you don't pay for it. People think we are crazy about how much we spend on our kids' activities, but it makes them happy and we only get the chance to do it once, right?

That being said, we've had some pretty exciting things happen this month and ill be sharing some of that, as well as introducing how we incorporate my son's competition gymnastics into this crazy mix.

-Rothrock Mom