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So you’ve taken the kids up to ski a few times, and you’ve rented every time. Each time you fork over the cash for the rental equipment, you wonder if maybe it’s best to just buy some gear for the kiddos.

It’s a legitimate question, since ski gear can be pricey, and kids outgrow it fast.

Fortunately, you can get a definitive answer using some simple math.

It works like this:

The average cost of renting kids’ ski gear is $30 per day.

The average cost of buying kids’ ski gear is $350 (boots and skis).

Unless your child has a crazy growth spurt one year, you’ll usually get two seasons of use before he or she outgrows the gear.

So, you can roughly calculate whether it’s worth buying gear or not by multiplying the number of days your child will ski in two seasons by $30 (or the exact cost of renting gear for a day at your local resort).

The equation looks something like this:

[daily cost of rental gear] x [number of ski days]

If the cost of renting gear for all of those days is higher than $350, you’ll probably save yourself money, or at least break even, by purchasing gear.

Obviously, you’ll have to do some estimation, since it’s hard to pin down an exact number of ski days each year. But there are ways to recover some of the buying cost if you don’t get as many ski days as you planned for.

We’ll talk about those next.

Tips on Buying Kids Skis

If it turns out that buying gear is best for you, there are a few ways to maximize the value you get from your purchase:

1. Buy gear at the beginning of the season. Since it’s possible that they might outgrow their gear over the summer, it’s best to buy children’s gear at the beginning of winter when you’ll get the most use out of the equipment.
2. Reuse gear. They may not like it, but handing gear down from child to child is the way to go.
3. Sell old gear. Kids ski gear will usually hold up for longer than kids can wear it. So you can recoup some of the cost by selling your old gear. You can do this pretty easily online. But ski swaps and flea markets are a great places to offload unused gear, too.
4. Buy a bit large. This is especially true for very young children, since they aren’t really skiing so much as standing on their skis while they slide. But buying a tad large extends the useful life of children’s gear by giving some room to grow.

   Typically, the shell of children’s ski boots should have room for about three fingers between the heel and the rear of the shell, when the liners are removed. Skis can be about as tall as the child. Here’s a good children’s ski size chart to help you out.

5. Skip the poles. Poles just complicate the process of learning to ski. Your child will do just fine without poles until they’re in their teens. Some skiers never use poles. So save yourself some cash and leave the poles out for the early years.

These are all fairly simple. But they can make skiing much more cost effective for you and your family in the long run.

So, try the quick math, and see if you might be able to save a bit of money this ski season.