Lifetime Cost Of ASHA: $18,600

If you plan on having a thirty-year career as an SLP, it could cost you $18,600 over that period to both maintain your ASHA membership and pay for ASHA CEUs. And that amount doesn't even include your state licensing renewal fees and the cost of CE Registry (more about that in a future post).
ASHA currently charges $225 for renewal for certified members (of course, that's the current cost; we all can expect that to increase in the future). Multiply that times thirty years of practice:

$225 X 30 yrs = $6,750.

That's just the beginning of ASHA's cut of your salary, though. You need CEUs (ASHA decreed that you needed CEUs, so - presto! - you get another financial burden added to your practice).
Looking at ASHA's latest catalog , we find that the average cost of 0.2 ASHA CEUs is $79. You need 3.0 CEUs every three years to maintain your CCCs.

$79 X 15 (3.0 divided by 0.2 = 15) = $1,185.

$1,185 X 10 (you'll need to buy CEUs ten times over the course of a thirty-year career) = $11,850.

$11,850 plus $6,750 = $18,600 - Lifetime cost of ASHA

Let me put that into better perspective for you:
If the average hourly SLP salary is $30.34 (based on an average of school-based slp salaries found on the internet),

$18,600 divided by 30.34 = 613 hours

613 hours divided by a 7.5 work day = 81.7 days = 16 weeks = 4 months

This means that you will spend four months of your life working to pay off your ASHA fees:


September, October, November, December - that's almost half a school year spent working to support ASHA.

Just keep repeating the following phrase to yourself, over  and over:
"ASHA is worth it, ASHA is worth it, ASHA is worth it..."