Find Out What Each Of Your Kids' Activities Really Costs An Hour
A term fee tells you what you paid, not what you got — and it leaves out the driving entirely. This values the round-trip travel at an hourly rate you set, adds it to the fee, and divides by the hours of activity actually delivered. Ranked, it usually reorders everything: the cheap-looking club an hour away often costs more per hour than the expensive one down the road. Local only; nothing leaves the tab.
- Audit
- Fee plus priced travel, divided by hours of activity
- local
- What it replaces
- Judging activities by the term fee
- $0.00
- Input
- Fees, sessions, length, and travel per activity
- no card
- Output
- Cost per hour, ranked, with a term total
- recomputed
What you pay otherwise
| Route | What you get | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Budgeting by term fee | The driving never appears in the number | hidden |
| Cutting the wrong activity | Dropping the one that was cheapest per hour | lost value |
| Family budget app | Tracks what left the account, not what it bought | $0–$10/mo |
| This page | Cost per attended hour, ranked | $0 |
The workflow
Price your travel time, don't just count it
A 45-minute session with 25 minutes of driving each way delivers 45 minutes of activity but consumes 95 minutes of a parent's evening. The tool values that round trip at an hourly rate you set and adds it to the fee, so the driving stops being invisible.
Use the sessions you actually attend
If a term's 12 sessions include three your child misses, count nine. The per-hour figure is meant to reflect what you get, not what you bought.
Add the kit and grading fees to the term fee
Graded exams, competition entry, and mandatory kit are part of the cost of the activity even when they're invoiced separately. Leaving them out flatters exactly the activities that already cost the most.
Read the ranking, then decide on more than the ranking
Cost per hour tells you what things cost; it says nothing about what they're worth. Use it to find the activities you're overpaying for by accident, not to cut the one your child loves because it ranks last.
Worked example
Sample: 4 activities, 10 sessions each, travel at 25/hr Scouts 70 + 208.33 travel = 278.33 / 15.0 h = 18.56/hr Football 95 + 250.00 travel = 345.00 / 10.0 h = 34.50/hr Swimming 180 + 166.67 travel = 346.67 / 7.5 h = 46.22/hr Piano 260 + 125.00 travel = 385.00 / 5.0 h = 77.00/hr Fees 605 · true term cost 1,355 · blended 28.53/hr Uploaded nothing — computed in the tab
Numbers above are sample data produced by the tool's own pre-loaded example, run in the browser — not averages or measured benchmarks.
What breaks this
Entering one-way travel halves the real cost of the driving. Setting your time value to zero turns the audit back into a fee comparison and hides the driving again. Leaving out kit and grading fees systematically understates the costliest activities.
Try it now
Four activities with travel priced at 25 an hour are loaded: Scouts cheapest at 18.56/hr, Piano dearest at 77.00/hr. Double Piano's travel time and its cost per hour jumps to 102.00.
Open the audit →Go deeper: the printable card
The audit is free forever. The $4 one-time tier adds:
- Printable card — the ranked audit on one sheet — estimate: ~12 min saved rebuilding it each term.
- Saved term budgets — keep up to 6 terms in this browser — estimate: ~15 min saved comparing terms.
- Per-child breakdown — the audit split by child — estimate: ~10 min saved sorting it by hand.