How do people afford it?

[Anonymous]

Part of this is timing. I’m also not house poor, but I recognize a lot of it is luck in terms of timing. If I had to move to an urban area now with 2 kids, I’d likely be house poor.

Same here. We bought our house for 800k in 2019 (which seemed insane then for a tiny old house). Thankfully refi’d when the rates went crazy low. Same house would probably be well over 1 million now and at 7%+ interest rates there’s no way we could swing that mortgage and private school tuition.

[Anonymous]

Yes, it's fair to say that those of us who bought and financed (or refinanced) when rates were at 2% have way more room to pay for private school than those who are borrowing now.

[Anonymous]

Reading through this has convinced me how absolutely wretched most of you are, and you have no idea. I think I’d rather hang out with the ordinary folk sending their kids to public than any of you horrid people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Reading through this has convinced me how absolutely wretched most of you are, and you have no idea. I think I’d rather hang out with the ordinary folk sending their kids to public than any of you horrid people.

Why do you think we’re so horrid?

[Anonymous]

People like OP go to good public schools not private schools. Assuming OP has a low mortgage rate, even moving to a smaller house won't really help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Reading through this has convinced me how absolutely wretched most of you are, and you have no idea. I think I’d rather hang out with the ordinary folk sending their kids to public than any of you horrid people.

Flying private doesn’t make me horrid. It saves me a lot of time and headache and I am more pleasant as a result

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Reading through this has convinced me how absolutely wretched most of you are, and you have no idea. I think I’d rather hang out with the ordinary folk sending their kids to public than any of you horrid people.

Semi adjacent topic ramblings.

Yea, the flaunting of wealth (in this forum in particular) has always been something else. I’d like to think half the time it’s just a bunch of kids trolling, but unfortunately we’re familiar with “people like that.”

We’re good friends with a “big 3” (another joke, but whatever) teacher. She refuses to let her kid go to the school because of how obscene the kids are there. Different planet kind of things.

Among many examples, one of the more amusing was she didn’t want to have to deal with her child watching classmates go on extravagant trips all the time (a fair number of them on private, of course) while they did a stay/local vacation. That kind of flagrant display of excess can eat away at a young mind.

To the inevitable haters of these comments, we are well off like you. We just don’t flaunt it, or let anyone know. You might want to consider the same. None of us really deserve this, we just worked hard or had a right place right time moment.

Something about wealth in this area really brings out the special in people.

We now return you to the regularly scheduled show off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We make around $450k and manage to pay 2 tuitions with some family help, but when I look around my kids classes what’s obvious is that many families are just very wealthy. Large homes in Potomac or McLean plus summer homes, fancy vacations, very expensive cars, pricey country clubs. If you want to feel kind of poor with an income of $450k in dc just enroll your kids in a top private school.

+1 - this was our family. You make decisions about what you can’t go to afford tuition.

Vacations were tough and no major house renovations or fancy furniture. One ended up going public for HS because there wasn’t a good fit for them for private. Have to be honest that it took a lot of pressure off our finances.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We make around $450k and manage to pay 2 tuitions with some family help, but when I look around my kids classes what’s obvious is that many families are just very wealthy. Large homes in Potomac or McLean plus summer homes, fancy vacations, very expensive cars, pricey country clubs. If you want to feel kind of poor with an income of $450k in dc just enroll your kids in a top private school.

+1 - this was our family. You make decisions about what you can’t go to afford tuition.

Vacations were tough and no major house renovations or fancy furniture. One ended up going public for HS because there wasn’t a good fit for them for private. Have to be honest that it took a lot of pressure off our finances.

At 450k you can still afford private and vacations.

[Anonymous]

I don’t see how you can afford that. We have similar income but paid off mortgage, and no way do I think we could afford private for our kids without going on a very tight budget everywhere else in our life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Reading through this has convinced me how absolutely wretched most of you are, and you have no idea. I think I’d rather hang out with the ordinary folk sending their kids to public than any of you horrid people.

I live in Bethesda, all of my neighbors are pretty wealthy though maybe half send their kids to private school. Some of our private school friends are on financial aid and aren’t wealthy at all. Who do you think is so wretched and why? Would you hang out with very wealthy people in public school but not non-wealthy people in private?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t see how you can afford that. We have similar income but paid off mortgage, and no way do I think we could afford private for our kids without going on a very tight budget everywhere else in our life.

At $450k with $80k as our largest expense we make it work. We have a small house with a very low mortgage and interest rate, no other major expenses. We are pretty frugal and do mostly vacations driving to visit family and watch all of our day to day expenses. It’s not that comfortable but it’s do-able.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reading through this has convinced me how absolutely wretched most of you are, and you have no idea. I think I’d rather hang out with the ordinary folk sending their kids to public than any of you horrid people.

I live in Bethesda, all of my neighbors are pretty wealthy though maybe half send their kids to private school. Some of our private school friends are on financial aid and aren’t wealthy at all. Who do you think is so wretched and why? Would you hang out with very wealthy people in public school but not non-wealthy people in private?

This is a good response. People should " live and let live" and MYOB.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We’re good friends with a “big 3” (another joke, but whatever) teacher. She refuses to let her kid go to the school because of how obscene the kids are there. Different planet kind of things.

What percentage of the kids do you think are actually "obscene" at these schools? We've been at one of these schools for many years and almost never interact or hear about these kinds of things. Make no mistake, the vast majority of families are well off, but showy displays of wealth are the exception and not the rule.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t see how you can afford that. We have similar income but paid off mortgage, and no way do I think we could afford private for our kids without going on a very tight budget everywhere else in our life.

At $450k with $80k as our largest expense we make it work. We have a small house with a very low mortgage and interest rate, no other major expenses. We are pretty frugal and do mostly vacations driving to visit family and watch all of our day to day expenses. It’s not that comfortable but it’s do-able.

What kind of a cushion do you have if you or your spouse was laid off? Or are you both in very secure jobs (fed, physician)? I wasn't comfortable paying for private until I knew I had enough savings that I'd be ok if I were laid off at age 50 and never got another job at anything new my current salary.