Summer Camp Savings Calculator

Summer Camp is Inevitable, Make it Easier

Unless you have three months of vacation stocked up, if your kids are young like mine then the need for childcare every summer isn't going away any time soon. Unfortunately, it's also getting more expensive and as your children age into sleepaway camp or special interest camps, the prices can spike even higher.

Our hope is that this guide and calculator can help reduce the pain each year of those lump costs, and selfishly, we just needed to find a smarter way to pay for camp ourselves. Add in a second kid, or even more children, and the costs can quickly get out of hand. Our hope is that by starting this strategy while our youngest is only one, that by the time we need summer camp for two children we'll be a bit more prepared.

It doesn't matter when you start, or even how much you can put away during the year. The idea isn't that the fund needs to cover every summer, but hopefully we can help you lessen the shock of those large annual fees. There are 3 main ways that we suggest setting up your own summer savings system:

How to set up a summer camp savings fund

1. Start Early: Open (and contribute to) a High-Yield Savings Account that allows for savings buckets or sub-accounts. This will help you funnel savings for specific uses without losing out on growing your larger savings goals.
2. Make Regular Contributions: Auto-transfer monthly or per paycheck. These regular contributions, even of a small amount, will add up significantly over the course of the year and will, of course, accumulate more and more interest with time and growth.
3. Set Yourself Up for the Long Term: Overfund if you can. If you know what your summer costs are likely to be each year, and you can afford to save the full amount over a 9-12 month period, consider adding a 5-10% buffer to your contributions. This will both increase your compound interest and provide you with more savings for unexpected summer costs. Kid suddenly has an interest in horseback riding? Needs a specialty camera for photography camp? You'll be ready. If your kids age out of camp and you still have funds leftover, then the college bookstore will be happy to separate you from those extras.

More Ideas for Saving

High-yield savings accounts are a great way to keep summer funds rolling and growing year after year, and they should be part of a larger effort to cut costs where you can. Here are a few additional tips:

1. Dependent Care FSA's can be used for day camps (but not sleepaway camps) and are a great way to maximize your pre-tax dollars for a cost you'll have to pay anyway.
2. Plan Ahead: Most summer camps offer early bird discounts, discounts for sending multiple children, or even scholarships. We recommend you start researching these very early in case there is any kind of application process. Also, this is not the time to be shy, contact the camps you're interested in and ask them what they can do to lighten the cost burden. Even if they don't advertise it, many camps want to make summer fun more accessible to more kids.
3. Consider a Cashback Card: Use a strong cashback card, with 2% or more, to pay the camp fees and then immediately pay off that card using the HYSA you've set up for summer. That's basically free money right into your pocket.

Use it or… Use it

Really the best benefit of this strategy is that there are no limits or restrictions on what you can use the savings for. Plus, you don't even have to use it all every year. In fact, if you can use just part of the fund, then as you continue your contributions, it will grow even further to accommodate the larger costs that older kids can bring as they start asking for things like study abroad programs.

Between you and me, you can even use this money for unexpected costs that come up before the summer and rebuild it.