4 ms·

> a few thousand a month Is this literal? How does it break down? I guess you have to travel to a lot of tournaments, fix/replace a lot of expensive equipment,

• hardwaregeek 6y ago
  Yep, unfortunately. Private fencing lessons cost about 95 dollars. You want around 2 a week plus 2-3 group classes which cost 45 dollars. That's already 280-325 dollars a week. Add on flying to both domestic and international tournaments, which is easily a thousand just for flights and hotels, not to mention strip coaching fees and other random costs (airline lost your baggage? Guess you gotta buy a whole new set of fencing gear!). Oh and the club membership costs a thousand a year and there's fencing camp in the summer for $1500. Gear may seem expensive but it's really not in comparison. Blades will cost you about 100-120 a pop, they break every 6 months, a year if you're careful. Full international grade gear you could do for under 1000 dollars. Granted this is the insane top of the top. But I do know quite a few parents who pay for this.
  • retsibsi 6y ago
    Thanks (very belatedly) for the breakdown! It's one of those things that makes sense in detail but still feels surprising in aggregate.
• dragonwriter 6y ago
  Private lessons on the close order of $100 two, or maybe more, times a week, plus group classes several times a week for maybe another $100, plus travel, plus equipment, plus competition fees, is probably true for lots of individual sports. For most the lessons will be the big expenses.
  • retsibsi 6y ago
    Yeah, I guess this was probably going on even in some of the sports I played as a junior, like tennis -- it's just that I was never near the top tier, where that level of expense would begin to seem possible/necessary.