What percentage of your net income goes to tuition?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a PP who won't "just move." Responding to 10:48, the reason we don't rent is that it actually works financially for us to send one kid private and live in a cheap house in a bad school district. I agonized for a while about my desire to support the public schools, but then I realized: moving to a rich neighborhood and leaving my working class neighborhood with yet another house on the market is just moving trouble around. I would get to say I use the public schools, yes, but the neighborhood we'd move to would be even more exclusive than the independent school my kid now goes to. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that we don't see avoiding paying tuition as our family's highest financial or moral goal. Getting a great education and spending lots of time together are. There are lots of ways to skin that cat.

You live in your "working class neighborhood" but you send your kid to private school. Uh, ok?!? You're just a hypocrite.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:3 kids, 37% of take-home pay. Mortgage is 25% of take-home. Ouch.

You simply cannot afford private school! My god, look out for your financial future and stop this foolishness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:3 kids, 37% of take-home pay. Mortgage is 25% of take-home. Ouch.

You simply cannot afford private school! My god, look out for your financial future and stop this foolishness.

You don't know this poster's full financial picture. Tuition is approximately 33% of our take-home pay (after retirement deductions, etc.). Our mortgage is approx 24%. However, we have close to $2M in savings and home equity. Our HHI is just part of the picture.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:3 kids, 37% of take-home pay. Mortgage is 25% of take-home. Ouch.

You simply cannot afford private school! My god, look out for your financial future and stop this foolishness.

You don't know this poster's full financial picture. Tuition is approximately 33% of our take-home pay (after retirement deductions, etc.). Our mortgage is approx 24%. However, we have close to $2M in savings and home equity. Our HHI is just part of the picture.

The "ouch" sums up whether or not this PP could afford it. BTW, I'd say that even with $2m in savings and home equity, you also cannot afford it at these percentages. Home equity is not fixed (the last few years should have proven that to everyone) and depending on your age that amount won't sustain your ability to pay for college and safely fund a retirement.

Our savings is about what you claim your is but I would not put kids in private if it meant 33% of take home pay. That's just nuts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:3 kids, 37% of take-home pay. Mortgage is 25% of take-home. Ouch.

You simply cannot afford private school! My god, look out for your financial future and stop this foolishness.

You don't know this poster's full financial picture. Tuition is approximately 33% of our take-home pay (after retirement deductions, etc.). Our mortgage is approx 24%. However, we have close to $2M in savings and home equity. Our HHI is just part of the picture.

The "ouch" sums up whether or not this PP could afford it. BTW, I'd say that even with $2m in savings and home equity, you also cannot afford it at these percentages. Home equity is not fixed (the last few years should have proven that to everyone) and depending on your age that amount won't sustain your ability to pay for college and safely fund a retirement.

Our savings is about what you claim your is but I would not put kids in private if it meant 33% of take home pay. That's just nuts.

Our kids' college educations are already fully funded (and there should be leftover to help fund grad school) and we both have about 30 years of working to fully fund retirement (and retirement savings are not included in our net income). I think we're doing perfectly okay and don't feel like tuition puts us in a pinch at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:3 kids, 37% of take-home pay. Mortgage is 25% of take-home. Ouch.

You simply cannot afford private school! My god, look out for your financial future and stop this foolishness.

You don't know this poster's full financial picture. Tuition is approximately 33% of our take-home pay (after retirement deductions, etc.). Our mortgage is approx 24%. However, we have close to $2M in savings and home equity. Our HHI is just part of the picture.

The "ouch" sums up whether or not this PP could afford it. BTW, I'd say that even with $2m in savings and home equity, you also cannot afford it at these percentages. Home equity is not fixed (the last few years should have proven that to everyone) and depending on your age that amount won't sustain your ability to pay for college and safely fund a retirement.

Our savings is about what you claim your is but I would not put kids in private if it meant 33% of take home pay. That's just nuts.

Our kids' college educations are already fully funded (and there should be leftover to help fund grad school) and we both have about 30 years of working to fully fund retirement (and retirement savings are not included in our net income). I think we're doing perfectly okay and don't feel like tuition puts us in a pinch at all.

Then, why the "ouch" statement? People who can really afford something rarely say ouch. BTW, one never knows what situations are around the corner. You may well have 30 years of working to fully fund your retirement or you may not. Many things can happen and the dollars you invest 30 years from now are worth far less than the ones you invest now. Simple investing strategy. You probably know you can't really afford it, but if if makes you feel better to say you can afford it, ok.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:3 kids, 37% of take-home pay. Mortgage is 25% of take-home. Ouch.

You simply cannot afford private school! My god, look out for your financial future and stop this foolishness.

You don't know this poster's full financial picture. Tuition is approximately 33% of our take-home pay (after retirement deductions, etc.). Our mortgage is approx 24%. However, we have close to $2M in savings and home equity. Our HHI is just part of the picture.

The "ouch" sums up whether or not this PP could afford it. BTW, I'd say that even with $2m in savings and home equity, you also cannot afford it at these percentages. Home equity is not fixed (the last few years should have proven that to everyone) and depending on your age that amount won't sustain your ability to pay for college and safely fund a retirement.

Our savings is about what you claim your is but I would not put kids in private if it meant 33% of take home pay. That's just nuts.

Our kids' college educations are already fully funded (and there should be leftover to help fund grad school) and we both have about 30 years of working to fully fund retirement (and retirement savings are not included in our net income). I think we're doing perfectly okay and don't feel like tuition puts us in a pinch at all.

Then, why the "ouch" statement? People who can really afford something rarely say ouch. BTW, one never knows what situations are around the corner. You may well have 30 years of working to fully fund your retirement or you may not. Many things can happen and the dollars you invest 30 years from now are worth far less than the ones you invest now. Simple investing strategy. You probably know you can't really afford it, but if if makes you feel better to say you can afford it, ok.

I was not the one that said "ouch," PP said it. Even after our mortgage, tuition, taxes, insurance and retirement savings, the money we are left with is more than double the median income for Montgomery County, where we live, which is one of the top 10 richest counties in the U.S. Our financial planner doesn't have a problem with us spending money on private school. I don't know why you do.

[Anonymous]

I could care less personally. Why do you care what anonymous people think about your finances? Also, I hope you aren't planning your financial strategy based on the rubric you mention/ it makes no sense from a financial planning perspective!

[Anonymous]

Full pay, 30% of income. One payor. 1 1/2 jobs. My choice and happy with it. DC happy with it. That's all that matters for my family. I don't complain.

Never would I allow an anonymous column or anybody, for that fact, dictate where I should live and how I spend my money. If you are not contributing, then you have no say, period.

[Anonymous]

Many here have substantial assets appreciating each year that don't appear in net income. Fun to talk about percents of net income, but for those with substantial retirement savings and/or other investments, that doesn't mean much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Full pay, 30% of income. One payor. 1 1/2 jobs. My choice and happy with it. DC happy with it. That's all that matters for my family. I don't complain.

Never would I allow an anonymous column or anybody, for that fact, dictate where I should live and how I spend my money. If you are not contributing, then you have no say, period.

+1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Full pay, 30% of income. One payor. 1 1/2 jobs. My choice and happy with it. DC happy with it. That's all that matters for my family. I don't complain.

Never would I allow an anonymous column or anybody, for that fact, dictate where I should live and how I spend my money. If you are not contributing, then you have no say, period.

+1000

My guess is that the poster claiming you can't afford it is trying to feel better about her choice to send her kids to public school.

[Anonymous]

I so shouldn't ask this question, but PP, why am I a hypocrite for living in a working class neighborhood but sending my kid to private school? Is it that I hang out with working class people that bothers you, or that a I have the temerity to think my middle class kid is good enough to hang out with rich people at school? Just trying to understand where exactly I'm going wrong, you know. I assume your solution is that I should take my middle class self to a middle class neighborhood and send my kids to a middle class school so we can all keep our social lines drawn nice and clear?

[Anonymous]

To those who are spending so much on private school, a question: are you saving for college? The cost of college is out of control and shows no signs of stopping. By the time an ES aged child get's to college, who knows how much it will cost? If it is a struggle to pay for private elementary, middle, and high school, what is left for college?

[Anonymous]

PP, the cost of private school is about 2/3 of the cost of college. If you have been paying for private school for 12 years and balancing your budget, you can pay for 2/3 of the cost of college per year out of pocket (like you have been doing) and then take loans for the remaining 1/3 tuition/room/board. Its only 4 years. Plus most of us do save SOMETHING, just not the whole enchilada, and some of us have a tuition benefit at work that helps (I do). Almost no one in the US saves enough to pay for all of college...its just that around here it is expected that you do.