In April 2026, I gave up my private sports club membership. The stock market was correcting again due to the war in Iran, oil and inflation had shot up, and I figured it was time to cut expenses and simplify.
The membership was $185 a month. On top of that I paid $25 per guest to bring each of my two kids, so another $50 every visit four times a month.
Earlier in the year, I cut cable to save about $70 a month. I was watching all the NBA and NFL games in 10 to 15 minute highlights on my phone anyway. Saving the money and reclaiming hours of screen time felt like a good trade, regardless of the economy.
As the financial provider for a family of four, the wider the gap between my income and our expenses, the better I feel. Long gone are the days of saving 50% to 70% of my income while I worked in finance. That saving rate has drifted way down as living expenses surged.
That is the precarious math of dual unemployed parents, or DUPs, trying to stay home until both kids leave. Don't try it without one partner testing FIRE first.
The Two Cuts, And How They Actually Felt
Going without cable was harder than expected at first. The Olympics were on and I love watching the GS Warriors. So I bought a $39 antenna at Target, caught the Olympics fine, and got used to highlights on YouTube.
The club was the bigger loss. It has swimming, tennis, pickleball, ping pong, a basketball gym, a workout room, hot tubs, and a place to eat. What a wonderful and safe place to spend an entire day with children.
That club is also 20 miles away, a 30 to 40 minute drive each way. The activation energy to go is real, especially after writing and playing pickleball from 6am to 9:30am. Add four or five hours at the club and you have burned an entire day.
So we adjusted. We went to public parks more. Reclaiming 60-80 minutes of driving every Sunday and staying local was genuinely nice. The pool time and stroke practice would have to wait. Both kids swim well enough to have passed the test and can be left unattended in the pool if necessary.
A Nice Turnaround In The Markets
Then the market did what markets do. Since we cut costs in April, the S&P 500 climbed from about 6,600 to over 7,600 today. That was a relief after it sold off to 6,368 on March 29, 2026. As an investor who depends on his portfolio more than someone with stable active income, I felt much better about our situation.
So as any rational household CFO would do, I ran the numbers again in tools such as Empower and Boldin to see whether we could spend more again.
We could, and I knew we could without checking. But I did not resubscribe to cable. I am thoroughly used to living without it, and it has given me back roughly an hour a day. I've spent that hour writing on Financial Samurai and working on my next book, Your Children Will Be OK.
Then I ran the numbers on rejoining the club at $185 a month. Resounding yes. Just one problem.
The guest fee had gone from $25 per person to $100 per person. That meant $200 in guest fees every time I brought my two kids. Four Sundays a month and I'm at $985. For a club I had just quit on principle.
So I sat on the decision. I was headed to Hawaii for a month to see my parents anyway.
The Catalyst That Made Me Rejoin A Private Club
If you've been reading Financial Samurai since August 2026, you already know what changed my mind. Two stern park rangers approached me on an empty public tennis court near my house while I was teaching my own children how to play. It was 3:15pm on a Thursday, when most people were at work.
I spent weeks reading thousands of comments and thinking about it. Here is where I landed.
I do not want to be approached by two armed people in batons and bulletproof vests again while I'm out with my six-year-old and my nine-year-old. It would have been one thing if the rangers were friendly. However, they were unwelcoming, asking me to prove my fatherhood.
Then I asked myself what the point was of saving and investing 50% to 75% of my after-tax income for 13 years if not to make life better for the people I love. Refusing to spend $185 a month on a club my kids enjoy, when I left work in 2012 with ~$3 million that has grown with the market since, isn't frugality. It's stinginess wearing frugality's jacket.
Being Able To Spend Fun Time With Them Is Even More Important
Then I did the other math, the one that actually decided it. The golden window for spending time with your children is only about 12 years, not 18. They are already aging out of the playground. At some point they will not want to spend five hours on a Sunday with dad when they could be with friends.
I know this because I was that kid. From sixth through eighth grade in Kuala Lumpur, all I wanted was to go skateboarding with my friends and grab food after. I was not longing to come home to my tired parents and explain why I did poorly in a class. I'm slowly sensing my 9-year-old doesn't want to spend as much time with me as in the past.
I cannot control how strangers treat us in public. So the next best option is to control the environment we're in.
Something protective switches on when you're out with young children. You want them safe, always. And a deserted park in a quiet corner of San Francisco on a Thursday at 3:15pm, with nobody around, still wasn't quiet enough. The city wants their money, however which way they can find it.
At the club, anyone who wants to bother us has to show a membership card at the front door first. There's no guarantee we'd never be hassled again. But the odds drop a lot when there's a front desk.
What A Private Club Membership Actually Costs
My dues are $185 a month. That's the number I'd been carrying around in my head as the cost of membership, and it's the number I felt good about cutting in April.
But dues were never the only cost. As a single member bringing two kids, I was paying $25 per guest, twice a visit, four Sundays a month. Another $200. So the membership I quit was actually $385 a month, or $4,620 a year. I had been underestimating my own expense by more than half.
Then the guest fee went from $25 to $100. Same math, new number: $185 plus $800 equals $985 a month. Nearly $11,820 a year to play tennis and pickleball with my own children.
That's when I looked at making the kids members instead. Two junior members plus me meant the household grew to $450 a month, or $5,400 a year. Roughly $6,400 a year cheaper than paying guest fees, and I stop doing arithmetic every time we walk through the door.
Dues are the entry fee. Guest fees, food minimums, locker rentals, assessments, and the initiation you already forgot about are where the real number lives.
How Sad Is This, Really
I went to public high school, public college at William & Mary, and public grad school at Berkeley for my MBA. I pay about $100,000 a year in property taxes, some of which funds the public parks and infrastructure I was standing on.
Apparently that isn't enough to feel welcome at a public park.
For the first time in 25 years I felt out of place in San Francisco. And that's a feeling I know well enough to recognize instantly.
I came to America in 1995 and landed in Northern Virginia, where the Asian population was about 5% at the time. Racial remarks and low-grade prejudice were just weather. You learned to dress for it. You didn't complain about it any more than you'd complain about humidity in August. It's hard to change how others view you, so you conserve your energy.
Then I moved to San Francisco in 2001, a majority-minority city, and the weather changed. For 25 years I have not once felt like a guest here. That is not a small thing. Most people who grew up as the default in their hometown have no idea what it's like to stop being the exception.
Here's what I didn't appreciate until recently. Moving to San Francisco was itself a purchase, especially after retiring in 2012. I don't have to be here.
This is one of the most expensive cities in the world, and part of what I bought with that cost of living was the feeling of belonging. I just didn't think of it as a line item at the time.
Choosing Your Desired Environment
We talk about money buying houses, cars, and freedom from work. We don't talk about it buying the ability to choose who surrounds you.
A city. Then a neighborhood, a school, then a club. Each one is the same transaction at a smaller scale, and each one costs more per square foot of comfort than the last.
In my 20s and 30s I didn't have many options because I didn't have much money. When someone made me feel unwelcome, I sucked it up. Or I found some common ground, and played nice, because I hadn't accumulated enough passive income to walk away from anything.
Now I'm 49 with two young kids. My tolerance for nonsense has gone down and my instinct to protect has gone way up. Today, the difference is that I can afford to leave. On Wall Street, we called this f you money. It's a nice option to have.
That's the sad part. Going private is not about status. I don't care about any prestige associated with joining a private organization. What I appreciate is belonging and the right to be left alone, and only some people can afford the ticket.
I'm self-selecting a set of tennis and pickleball courts with my children, while I continue to play on the public courts with my friends. Plenty of people don't get to select anything, which is exactly why the public courts should feel welcoming to everyone on them.
And as I argued in my backwards tax identification proposal, the people paying the most in taxes going private is arguably good for everyone else. We stop taking up space on the public courts. But at the same time, how sad is it that feeling unwelcome is one of the reasons why people go private in the first place.
This is how tribes starts. Someone makes you feel unwelcome, so you find a place where you won't. Then you're the one behind the door.
What Money Actually Buys
For years I wondered whether private schools, private lessons, and private clubs were worth it. For tuition I came up with a rule: earn at least 5X the net annual tuition per child before going private. Save your financial self before committing to a luxury expense.
As a father, I'm coming around. Peace of mind is worth a lot, and I'll pay for it. It's the reason why every rich person I know still has life insurance. They can self-insure, but they are willing to pay for the peace of mind their surviving heirs don't have to make financial decisions under duress.
My wife and I both went to public grade schools where fights were routine. Survival of the fittest builds grit in some kids. It crushes the spirit of others. The problem is you don't know which kid you have until it's perhaps too late, and most parents with the means won't take that bet.
So here's my actual fear. If something happens to my kids that money could have prevented, how would I live with that?
It's the same reason I traded in my Honda Fit for a Range Rover Sport the year my son was born. If we'd been hit in that Fit with its paper-thin doors and something had happened to my wife or son, I would never have forgiven myself. Money needs to be spent for a better life, otherwise, there's no point saving and investing so aggressively.
So if you're looking for motivation to save more, invest more, and take more calculated risk to beat average, add these two to the list: your children's safety and your own peace of mind.
Optionality is the whole point. You may never use it. But on the day you need it, you'll be glad you bought it.
Reader Questions
Have you ever gone private after a specific incident, rather than for status or convenience? What was the moment that flipped it for you? And what public thing have you quietly given up on, a park, a pool, a library, a stretch of sidewalk, because it stopped feeling comfortable? Finally, what is peace of mind actually worth to you in dollars per month, and have you ever run that number honestly?
The One Thing You Can't Buy Your Way Out Of
Every purchase in this post protects my kids while I'm still here. The club, the car even the city I chose. None of it does a thing for them if I'm not around.
That was the one gap I couldn't close with a membership fee, so I closed it with term life insurance instead. My policy runs until my youngest is out of college.
If you have young children and no life insurance policy, or one you bought before your kid arrived, spend three minutes comparing quotes on Policygenius. Free, no obligation, multiple carriers in one place. The version of this decision you regret is the one you keep putting off.
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The moment we flipped was when all the stupid “Antifa/George Floyd/Anti-Trump” insanity was happening in Portland OR. While we knew Portland was a “quirky” city when we moved there, I had a great opportunity and the money was good.
Then the quirky became insane and sometimes DANGEROUS. We used to enjoy the city but once that started, we chose to never spend a dime in a place that not only stops insanity but actively encourages it. We were done.
Now we live in a rural quiet place, a few thousand miles away from that Armageddon. Life is Great once again.
I’m also the product of public schools and colleges, and assumed I would just keep my kids in public schools.
Contrary to the idea that public schools are a bunch of indoctrination stations, I found that the teachers and curriculum are pretty reasonable. The problem is *the kids.* My sweet eldest daughter developed a bunch of negative behaviors within a month of starting pre-K. She started fighting her siblings, talking back to my wife and I, and generally being less kind and helpful. She also started chewing with her mouth open. When I asked her why, she told me that’s how the kids at school eat. After volunteering in her class, I understood what she was going through. She had a young teacher fresh out of college who had little control over her class, and several highly disruptive students who clearly had never been disciplined at home. The class also moved at the speed of the slowest student, and my overachiever daughter was visibly bored most of the time.
In the few years that have passed, we now make enough money to not qualify for public pre-K. So we’re sending our next child to a well-regarded church school. Wow, the difference. My middle child has become more polite and thoughtful, and her friends are lovely.
We may be on the private school bandwagon, even though our local district is considered pretty good. We’ll keep that 5x rule in mind.
Thanks for sharing. The social influences are strong when young, and can STICK for a very long time. Makes me wonder what’s going on. Are parents less attentive or spend less time with their kids in general at public schools? Do parents who pay private school tuition have a bigger bias towards making sure their kids know manners and more because money is at stake?
Who knows.
I’m also the product of public schools and colleges, and assumed I would just keep my kids in public schools.
Contrary to the idea that public schools are a bunch of indoctrination stations, I found that the teachers and curriculum are pretty reasonable. The problem is *the kids.* My sweet eldest daughter developed a bunch of negative behaviors within a month of starting pre-K. She started fighting her siblings, talking back to my wife and I, and generally being less kind and helpful. She also started chewing with her mouth open. When I asked her why, she told me that’s how the kids at school eat. After volunteering in her class, I understood what she was going through. She had a young teacher fresh out of college who had little control over her class, and several highly disruptive students who clearly had never been disciplined at home. The class also moved at the speed of the slowest student, and my overachiever daughter was visibly bored most of the time.
In the few years that have passed, we now make enough money to not qualify for public pre-K. So we’re sending our next child to a well-regarded church school. Holy cow, the difference. My middle child has become more polite and thoughtful, and her friends are lovely.
We may be on the private school bandwagon, even though our local district is considered pretty good. We’ll keep that 5x rule in mind.
Once you decide what makes you happy do it ! Time is the most valuable asset.
We send our children to private school. We live within walking distance so there is convenience and you avoid problems in public schools from other children and teachers (excessive wokeness, trans stuff etc.) as it is a Christian (Anglican) school, even though we aren’t Christian. I cancelled life insurance, which here is paid out of your superannuation fund (equivalent to 401k), when we stopped working. It doesn’t buy much at my age (61) anyway.
Wow, $100 fee per guest is crazy. It’s so high, it sends the message: we don’t want guests. I would go further, having to pay so much to add kids to your membership on top of the guest fee alternative tells another story: we don’t want kids in here. For comparison, my gym is $180 per month, but to add kids it is an additional $40/month per kid. They have summer camp, amazing child care, rock climbing walls, water slides, swimming lessons (add on), pickleball, and infant care… in other words, kids are welcome! Kids are celebrated. I choose to live in a community where the culture celebrates, loves, and protects the children around. Also to add my wife would be $80 per month, so it feels like they support marriage too.
If I remember correctly, you regularly do “daddy day camp” at this club with tennis/swimming/lunch. If this is correct, this is a no brainer. I’m also assuming there’s a fitness center there. Seems like a really good deal. Your kids will remember these times forever. And you being self employed getting out of the house may be good for you. I think your previous incident at the park was just a reminder of how valuable the club is to you and the family. There is nothing wrong with taking your hard earned assets and spending on this; it’s the whole point of wealth building. I live in a nice area and I still send my 3 kids to private high school because of the environment. It’s just an elevated environment with higher expectations and standards vs the public schools. Great article and follow up from the park incident.
When I was reading that you dropped your private membership, I was going Nooooooo. You love tennis. The one thing that is great is that you spent time with your children and you really can’t get that time back. My wife and I might not be ready for empty nesters. Spend as much time as you can.
When my kids were young enough to benefit from it, we had a private club membership of a similar cost and amenities. It was worth every moment of swimming, exercising, running and family time. Once they stopped going with me, I downgraded to a $20/mo membership at a different gym just for myself. Interestingly, in recent months, my oldest started coming with me again, to that gym as my guest (no charge!). Regarding public/private, ideally we’d have great public amenities especially in our great cities. I’m not sure it’s a problem that they enforce our public areas not being used for private lessons without appropriate controls, otherwise we (the public) would be boxed out of using the stuff we already pay for. No great answer to that conundrum without someone having hurt feelings about it.
SF is a hyper-Left city. Accordingly, how you are treated is determined by the demographic class for which you are a member. The Left abruptly devalued several of the demographic classes it historically relied on for political power: homosexual men, Jews, blacks, and also Asians. In terms of importance, they have been replaced by Muslims, openly revolutionary communists, and transgendered people. Going forward, you should expect to be treated like a member of a second class by the local (and state) government.
The alternative is to relocate to a red state where you will be judged on the merits of your contributions to your family and the larger community. Any prejudice you encounter will derive from your neighbors’ apprehension that their new Asian neighbors from San Francisco do not share their conservative values and will be voting for DSA Democrats. You will, however, be given every opportunity to prove their apprehension misplaced.
Sounds fascinating. Where do you live and what race are you?
Hi Sam.
My wife and I are northern-European caucasians. We live in northern Palm Beach County, Florida.
Between Travis AFB, Davis, and Sacramento, I lived in northern California for several decades. The changes there have been as unpleasant as they were fast.
I was saddened but not surprised by your recent experience in SF.
At age 55, I retired and left California. I will always miss SF which for me peaked from the mid-90s to around 2010. I have wonderful memories from SF, but that version of SF is gone and never returning.
Life in Florida is better.
I have no anxiety about my car being burglarized. I am not awakened by the sound of rattling junk and glass bottles being pushed in a stolen shopping cart past my home before sunrise. Here, there are no sidewalk encampments populated by dozens of addicts, criminals, and other feral humans. Voters expect administrative competence from the politicians, not ideological adherence. Common sense, not public sector bargaining units, dictates public policy.
Net migration out of blue states is happening for a reason.
The radical left is now calling you “White Adjacent”. Nobody else is doing that. That’s just racism in a new wrapper.
1960s HS taught the left are commies. Stand in line for your potato every day in all commie governments.
Wow! What a strange take. I am a middle aged white woman who lives in a conservative part of a blue state. No, you aren’t judged by merit or wealth. And you will get nothing for your taxes and your political representatives will openly mock you. Human rights should be something Americans can agree are important.
The city is simply too greedy. They would leave those homeless tents alone but would intimidate people who want to learn and teach. How sad…in midwest where population density is much lower, I see people do private lessons in the public parks all the time, no rangers no problems
We sold a house in coastal California in 2004 and bought a home in a less expensive, lower crime area in western Washington state. We were able to buy a larger home on 5 acres for less than half the cost. 20 years later, we did it again. The area we moved to became a high tax, high crime area, in which we didn’t even want to drive into town anymore. The government was unresponsive and doubled down on higher taxes, social progressive agendas, and low-performance public indoctrination centers (K-12 taxpayer funded education). I retired and we moved to Wyoming. Ultra-low crime, property taxes less than 50% per dollar value of home, sales tax 50% less, no inheritance tax, no capital gains tax. Neighbors are friendly, pace of life is slower. World class museums in town. Yellowstone National park is 50 miles away. A world class City-owned Rec Center with get this… 6 Pickle Ball courts… no charge. So we didn’t go private, per se. We just recognized when enough was enough and left a rapidly declining lifestyle area.
The downvote is amusing. Why not express your opinion as well?
Well said! I could have written that myself. It’s all very sad. At least you have somewhere to go. In Canada, there is really nowhere to go. The only thing to do is to diversify your life including wholly or in part leaving the country, which we have.
Nice analysis as always. Just curious: do you think there is any net worth number that would make you completely ignore costs of a few hundred dollars or even a thousand dollars a month? I get that you don’t want to waste money, and there is also a fun challenge to saving, but at the same time there is an opportunity cost in terms of time to budgeting when you don’t really need to do so.
I’m not sure. After being cost-conscious since I graduated college in 1999, I don’t think I can change in terms of lighting my spending as close to what I value as possible. It’s just in my DNA now.
I just don’t feel good when I feel like I’m wasting money you know? I think it’s also partly because I grew up in a relatively poor country when I was in middle school and had very poor friends and I worked at McDonald’s for $4.25 an hour. So the idea of not caring about $500 or thousands of dollars a month will probably never happen. Because that’s money I could’ve used to help someone else. At the very least.
How about you?
I totally hear you. I’ve become more comfortable spending money on some things, especially experiences, but I still have trouble spending money on objectively smaller expenses like parking or multiple streaming services. Habits learned for decades are difficult to change even when no longer necessary.
Sometimes money is there to make problems go away. Rent-a-cops interrogating you and your kids was a problem. I still find that situation entirely unnecessary, but it happened to you and was unpleasant.
Do you have room in the home to build a good, well-rounded home gym? Bank for buck equipment I’d suggest…TRX suspension trainer, adjustable kettlebells, adjustable dumbbells set, adjustable bench, yoga mat, various foam rollers, rower and/or spin bike. It certainly would cost a lot less than your estimated annual club fees and you save a lot of precious time not having to drive back and forth. Sure there are many benefits to being a member of a club but I can assure you that you can get a great workout and routine going if you have the self discipline and motivation, along with a good fitness program (maybe this is something you can hire a part time coach to design a routine and have periodic check-ins). Background…I’m 51 with 2 kids (8 & 11), was a personal trainer/holistic life coach for 15+ years. Worked at Equinox San Mateo for 10 years and other gyms, and lived in RWS for awhile (so I know and have been to the Bay Club).
I do! And sorry about the comment system. It’s on overdrive to deter bot spammers,but all your went through.
I’m a guy who needs sunshine I need to get out of the house. We have some land and a hot tub for the house. But I wanna get the kids out of the house to also let my wife rest.
I just joined a dad bod‘s challenge to build lean mass and lose fat.
Wish me luck!
Link the challenge, I’ll join!
Hah, it’s a school dad’s challenge with a dad as the fitness guru and arbiter after we send in our Dexascans. IF we don’t meet the goals in 90 days, we pay $5,000.
This hits home for me as a San Francisco resident. What frustrates me is that we pay some of the highest taxes in the country, the city has an enormous budget, and yet the experience of using basic public services can feel completely backwards. You see huge government salaries and layers of bureaucracy, but somehow there never seems to be enough accountability, efficiency, or common sense.
At some point you start asking yourself, “Why am I paying all this money for a system that makes my life harder?” If I can afford to pay again for a private club, private school, private security, etc., I understand why people do it. It isn’t necessarily about status. It’s about buying back the efficiency and peace of mind that you thought your taxes were supposed to provide in the first place.
And that’s the really sad part. When enough people who can afford it start opting out, the public system loses even more of the people who have the resources and incentive to demand that it improve. The wealthy go private, the middle class gets frustrated, and the bureaucracy just keeps humming along. That’s not a sustainable model for a great city.
The irony is that the more successful people become financially, the easier it is for them to stop participating in public spaces altogether. They can buy private schools, private clubs, private transportation, private neighborhoods, etc.
That makes your point about this being “sad” more interesting than simply saying private is better. If people are going private because they feel unwelcome in public, that says something about the public environment too. The goal shouldn’t be to make everyone go private. It should be to make people want to stay public.
What a whirlwind of thoughts, calculations, and experiences you’ve gone through over the last several months. But it sounds to me like your decision was a great one and as well worth it. The facilities you’re paying for sound amazing and that’s great. You’ve been able to utilize them so much and enjoy the peace that comes with it plus the development of your kids alongside it!