With a monthly salary of 30,000, it can't support a child's summer vacation

Text/Keyes

Editor/Miriam

Summer vacation is coming to an end, and countless children can finally go back to school.

After sending away the sacred beast at home, the parents breathed a sigh of relief. But when they took out their mobile phones and calculated how much money they spent on the child this holiday, their brows that had just stretched furrowed again.

Not unaware, but shocked, many families have found that they spent more than 10,000 yuan on their children this holiday.

Two days ago, a topic called #Parents complaining about their children's expenses of 560,000 yuan in 40 days of summer vacation was on the top of the hot search, which triggered a fierce discussion about summer expenses.

Is it really worth spending so much money on a summer vacation?

Summer spending money, not capping

Open social media and flip through it, and you will find that it seems that most children will turn into "gold-swallowing beasts that can't eat enough" during the summer vacation.

In just two months of the summer, many parents reported spending 20,000 or 30,000 on their children, and some families even spent more than 100,000.

No wonder some netizens lamented: "The monthly salary of 30,000 yuan can't support a child's summer vacation", "Every time the child is on vacation, the deposit must be halved".

〓 Image source: Daily Economic News

So where exactly is all this money spent?

Roughly speaking, a child's summer bill can be divided into two main parts.

The first part, make-up lessons.

Regardless of whether a child starts school in primary school or high school, they will basically be sent to make-up classes by their parents during the holidays to learn what they should have learned after school started.

For example, in our interview, there is a 6-year-old girl named Yue Yue, although she has not experienced a formal summer vacation, but she is ready to taste the taste of summer vacation make-up classes.

Yueyue's mother wants to enroll her child in pinyin make-up classes before school starts.

Originally, pinyin should have been learned from the first grade of primary school, but Yue Yue's mother read the Internet and said that some pinyin in the first grade of primary school is taught extremely sloppy, and if this thing is not learned at the beginning, it is likely that by the sixth grade it will not be pronounced well, and the pronunciation is not correct, and the problem is very serious.

So Yueyue's mother is now very entangled: on the one hand, she is afraid that her daughter will not be able to keep up with the course after entering school and her confidence in learning will be frustrated; On the other hand, she felt that it was too cruel to make up lessons for her children at the age of 6.

But 6 years old is actually not too early, after all, in our interview, some parents' children have just turned 3 years old, and they have already begun to attend the "intellectual development class" to lay the foundation for the future kindergarten roll.

Moreover, these are still the "basic funds" of make-up classes. If parents want their children to stand out and master some more middle-class hobbies in the summer, then taking equestrian as an example, what parents need to bear is: equestrian class card fee + coach fee + equipment fee + registration examination fee + registration fee...

A whole set is done, spending a small tens of thousands is not new.

The second part, tourism.

After the complete liberalization, this year's summer tourism is quite popular. According to the data given by Tongcheng Travel, the proportion of students traveling for the summer this year has reached 33%, the highest value in the past five years.

Along with tourism, it was the study group, but there were many problems with the study group, so many parents finally decided to take their children on a trip themselves.

〓 Study group in Beijing, image source: Beijing News

Before attending the "pinyin make-up class", 6-year-old Yue Yue first went to Shanghai and Wuhan, and then was taken to Inner Mongolia by her grandparents.

And when a family goes out together, the cost will naturally become a lot more.

Some netizens have simply made a statistic: a peripheral trip costs two or three thousand, a domestic trip costs 10,000 or 20,000, and if you want to go abroad, then the cost will have to go to a small tens of thousands.

In addition, this year's summer hotels are particularly expensive, in an interview with the Shiyan Evening News, a woman surnamed Yi said: "Compared with the past, the cost of travel this year has increased the amount of summer vacation expenses." ”

In addition to the above two summer "regular expenses", many parents have several temporary additions to their holiday bills:

Some parents updated their children's electronic devices, and a phone watch cost nearly two thousand; Some parents sent their babies to do orthodontics, and spent 15,000 with domestic braces; Some children were equipped with new glasses before school started, spending 5,000 yuan small.

There is also the cost of going to the amusement park, the cost of taking the baby to Disney, the cost of finding a month of vacation hosting.......

Countless expenses, miscellaneous superimposed together, so that a child's total summer vacation expenses easily rushed to 20,000 or 30,000 yuan, so that the Internet is full of sighs that "this parent can no longer afford to spend the summer vacation", and also made many netizens wonder whether those parents who claimed to spend more than 100,000 yuan on the summer vacation on the Internet are showing off in disguise.

So what is the actual situation?

The people in the bill

Regarding the "summer bill", a media outlet in Wenzhou recently conducted a survey and found that families with more than 10,000 yuan spent more than 10,000 yuan this summer vacation accounting for a little more than a quarter of the total.

〓 Study group in Beijing, image source: Chao News

In other words, in fact, the summer consumption concept of most families is still a "do what you can".

In our interviews, many parents did not spend more than $5,000 on their summer expenses.

For example, 7-year-old Mianmian, this holiday only spent about 1,500.

Mianmian's mother, a full-time housewife, has been at home this summer with her children to do homework and play, and did not choose to travel at all, on the grounds that "this year I am all traveling, not making fun, and going everywhere to sunbathe".

In the make-up class, the three make-up classes that Mianmian has taken are all billed annually, and there is no additional enrollment in the summer, so the whole thing to look at, the biggest expense of the little girl in July and August is to go back to her hometown with her parents - the round-trip bus fare is less than 200 yuan.

It is worth mentioning that several parents said that their summer bills not only have real money, but also human feelings.

Like 11-year-old Yiyi, she was sent by her parents to a relative's house in Beijing this summer.

As for where the child will go after coming to Beijing, Yiyi's parents do not force it, in their words: "As long as he leaves home, he will be happy, and there is no need to arrange attractions." ”

Therefore, in the few days I came to Beijing, Yiyi mainly visited non-reserved attractions, and the main things I spent on were small souvenirs sold by various museums.

In the end, Yiyi's "Beijing Study Tour Free Trip" did not cost a total of 2,000 yuan, of which more than half was still the travel fee.

〓 I didn't go to the Forbidden City, and the ticket was too difficult to grab

Of course, this expense certainly does not include personal debt.

Similarly, 16-year-old Yang Yang only spent more than 1,000 yuan this holiday, in the words of Yang Yang's mother: "He doesn't spend money at all except for eating." ”

Of course, Yang Yang also has to make up classes in the summer, but unlike most children, he basically spends no money on cram school.

Because Yang Yang's parents are teachers, every holiday, he will be sent by his parents to study with other teachers, and as a "replacement", the children of other teachers will also be sent to Yang Yang's parents to help with homework.

In principle, teachers cannot make up lessons in private, so there is no money in this "change children to teach" model, only human favors, and naturally it is not easy to count into the bill of summer vacation.

It is worth mentioning that in the process of collecting materials, we also found some "outliers", who questioned the composition of this summer bill.

How much does it cost to support a child's summer vacation?

On Zhihu, some people asked: How do you think about a summer vacation with a monthly salary of 30,000 yuan that cannot support your children?

One of the highly praised responses went like this:

This remark aroused heated discussions among netizens.

Some parents believe that the respondent's view is to guide the child's life in the direction of unhealthy life and plaything, which is extremely irresponsible.

But some parents said that they basically gave their children summer vacation as the respondent said

——It's not that he plays uncontrollably, but I just want him not to be so tight during the holidays.

And this exchange of opinions actually indirectly reveals to us a fact:

The essence of that more or less summer expense is actually the careful arrangement of their children's holiday life by some parents, and they want their children to do something "meaningful" during the holiday.

The so-called make-up classes and training are to not fall behind in the fierce examination, while the purpose of traveling is to broaden horizons and enhance knowledge.

Whether to spend money or not, in the eyes of these parents, what is given by a summer vacation, that dozens of days without school, needs to be completely filled by them with various means.

Otherwise, this summer vacation is not a "fulfilling summer vacation", which will make those parents who value "educational efficiency" feel particularly anxious:

"If the child does not study during the holiday, then the school may fall behind, the child does not travel during the holiday, then there will be no social currency that can be 'used' among classmates in the new semester."

Because of this, next to the holiday bills posted on the Internet, you can often see a supporting holiday schedule - as if its role is to inform the specific whereabouts of that summer expenditure.

〓 Source: Yangcheng Evening News

However, as Han Bingzhe puts it in "The Burnout Society", the truest creativity of an individual is often born from "deep boredom", from absolute mental relaxation caused by doing nothing.

This observation also applies to a child who has not yet entered society.

Asked by GQ magazine "where does your creative talent come from", renowned British composer Lin-Manuel Milan said he was thankful that his childhood was not disturbed by his parents, because nothing "inspires creativity more than an empty room and a blank piece of paper".

Interestingly, this traction for creative nature requires almost no substantial overhead.

In this sense, a summer vacation can be filled with a sum of money, but those "gaps" that are not filled and wasted also have a role that it cannot replace.

After all, the core meaning of summer vacation is to rest, not to let schoolwork and pressure continue.

So, how much does it cost to support a child's summer vacation?

After reading many summer bills and listening to many family stories, we realized that perhaps it was never money that supported a child's summer vacation - it was a little idle time, and some were given freedom.

And, years later, a time that can still be recalled and smiled.

*All names in this article are pseudonyms

Resources

1. Summer vacation becomes "money-burning season"? Maybe you're wrapped up in consumerism|China Business Daily

2. Take a look at Wenzhouwa's summer bills Spending the most between 5,000 and 10,000 | 《Chao News》

3. @十堰家长 How much did you spend on your child's summer vacation? |Shiyan Evening News

4. Which cities are the most popular summer tours this year or five years? |CBN