I wouldn't count on the grandparents being able to afford to send all three of your children to private school for 12 to 13 years. I'm sure they mean well but that's a hard thing to sign up for.
It's possible they're super rich, but I'd imagine they'd just pay for the whole thing if that were the case |
I wouldn't do it, but I will admit that I prioritize structure and stability for my kids over a LOT. I would never want to be in a situation where a job loss also means they need to leave their school community. |
This is what we do. Kids are thriving and going on fancy vacations |
I think this is very strong logic. Given how young your family is, I feel like you should follow through on this plan. Can always transfer from private to public very easily vice versa not so much. This decision is also very dependent on the strength of your local public schools. DCPS has some good elementary schools, ok middle schools and not good high schools so would prioritize private for older years there but MCPS is probably strongest in high school so private school might be more beneficial earlier on. |
Save 10K a year per child so that you can move to a better school district for middle school. |
Nope no way.. you kid and your family may LOVE the private school and it will be difficult for you to pull the kid out later.
It's like trying a business class flight to Asia the first time, you will always be unhappy and feel lesser if you can't afford it anymore. So don't buy tickets for business class if you can't afford to buy them again. |
We sent one to private school for $10K per year many years ago when our income was $250K and that was a struggle. I can't imagine how you can pull this off honestly OP. Granted, for us, DH is in consulting and income pretty much quadrupled since then. Now with our last one in high school at $45K per year, it is a drop in the bucket. Still, based on what I am reading, your income potential isn't such that you can pull this off. And I am a big proponent for private schools. Can you ask the grandparents if they can fully fund? Are they very wealthy? |
Quick breakdown:
$185k -$40k taxes -$30k mortgage -$10k food -$5k gas -$20k other misc. expenses -$10k private school tuition =that leaves $70k left to save, invest, etc. What am I missing? |
10k food? For a family of 5? And it's $30k private school tuition, not 10. No travel, no insurance, not even retirement savings accounted for here. The level of fuzzy math you're resorting to should answer your question for you, but like I said: magical thinking. |
Where is this 2.5k/m mortgaged home for a family of 5? This is like 1-bedroom apartment in DC. |
Anyone who bought before 2020? |
We don't travel, food is under $200/wk currently (Costco) so that figure is accurate, although it will go up somewhat when the baby starts solids, and I explicitly wrote at the end the remainder includes savings, etc. Tuition is not $30k/yr until the other two kids are older enough for Kindergarten, and at that point the income figure should be higher as well. |
OP, the entire thread is telling you this is a bad idea, but you clearly want to do it anyway. So just do it and deal with the consequences. |
America really is full of temporarily embarrassed millionaires. |
This is the actual Steinbeck quote: “Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: ‘After the revolution even we will have more, won’t we, dear?’ Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property. I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn’t have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves.” |