Private school for half the cost, would you do it?

[Anonymous]

I think there are a few other things you might want to consider.

1) Are you staff or contract employees?

2) I am an economist. Presumably you are too, so don't the recent collapses in pension funds, public and private, give you pause in counting on them as your main funding for retirement?

3) If you are aiming for a university abroad, you will probably want to target International Baccalaureate schools, whether public or private. Applying to university will be much easier. US universities are looking for different things: a broad set of skills, heavy extracurricular involvement to signal motivation etc.

4) My child is at Marie Reed. The teachers at the preschool level had Masters degrees, there are dedicated science classes, and teacher turnover is low. I don't think NCRC can make any of those claims. Private schools in the US offer lower salaries, so teachers tend to be less experienced and turnover is high. What privates do offer is smaller class sizes, which allows for more writing instruction.

5)You have probably read the research (mostly done by economists) that generally finds that about 25 % of the variation in exam results across kids is determined by the school, while home characteristics explain 60% of that variation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I saw this post on the private board and don’t see how you can raise a family on 130k post-tax income if you have two working parents and need childcare/ help with 2 (maybe 3) kids.

Are you kidding me?

This entire thread is making me nauseous. Go have this discussion over on private board with your rich heads up your asses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think there are a few other things you might want to consider.

1) Are you staff or contract employees?

2) I am an economist. Presumably you are too, so don't the recent collapses in pension funds, public and private, give you pause in counting on them as your main funding for retirement?

3) If you are aiming for a university abroad, you will probably want to target International Baccalaureate schools, whether public or private. Applying to university will be much easier. US universities are looking for different things: a broad set of skills, heavy extracurricular involvement to signal motivation etc.

4) My child is at Marie Reed. The teachers at the preschool level had Masters degrees, there are dedicated science classes, and teacher turnover is low. I don't think NCRC can make any of those claims. Private schools in the US offer lower salaries, so teachers tend to be less experienced and turnover is high. What privates do offer is smaller class sizes, which allows for more writing instruction.

5)You have probably read the research (mostly done by economists) that generally finds that about 25 % of the variation in exam results across kids is determined by the school, while home characteristics explain 60% of that variation.

OP here. Thank you for this very insightful info.
We are at the WB and IADB and from what I understand the retirement for people that got in when DH got in have not changed.
We may end up moving before highschool (we may never move... still not sure). I am glad you had such positive experiences at Marie Reed and I agree with you that the teachers are awesome and very competent. However, we have a friend who sent their child to PK3 there and had a horrible experience with the students in the class. The kid never got attention and there were a lot of problematic kids in the class. Our friend said many good things about the teacher, but she also said that the teacher was overwhelmed with the problematic kids in the class and was not able to meaningfully help their child. I am sure Marie Reed is a great school and we have WB friends who love it, we just think it’s not for us. NCRC is only a preschool so they don’t take tests and there is no way to compare the two schools. Finally, I am sure home characteristics are more important than the school kids aren’t, nevertheless school and classmates are very important too so a better school might make a difference (25% in the study you mentioned... not exactly peanuts).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I saw this post on the private board and don’t see how you can raise a family on 130k post-tax income if you have two working parents and need childcare/ help with 2 (maybe 3) kids.

Are you kidding me?

This entire thread is making me nauseous. Go have this discussion over on private board with your rich heads up your asses.

OP here. I am sorry this bothers you. I also think that 130k post taxes is a lot of money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I posted on the private school thread already and someone suggested to ask here too, so here it is.
DH and I get an allowance of about half tuition up to $19,000. We make about 170k after taxes. We have two kids and might have another.
Should we do it? We would not be able to afford $80k per year, but 40k we can do it (60... maybe if my income increases which might double (from 55 after taxes to 90) in a couple of years. What would you do? We are international and travel out of the country to see family twice a year (cheap because usually use miles or trip is paid by DH’s job) once we are there we stay with family. Trips are non-negotiable and a priority for us (we also save money in the summer because kids are in home country for 2-3 months and we don’t ever pay for summer camps. Would you do it at our income level?

We are also planning to move (need a bigger house) and by selling what we have now (we are in DuPont) we can get a bigger house inbound for stoddert, Murch, Lafayette, etc.

We work for international organizations and we have great benefits (pension will be 70% of highest paycheck, home leave money, and we don’t pay taxes except for property taxes).

You got good advice on the school choice issue. I work for the Bank as well and from my experience I can tell you the following three things:

- most people in your situation keep kids in well regarded public elementaries and make the transition to private at middle school or higher level, or move just across the border to MD.

- if you are set on private, you need to expand your choices to more than Sidwell and whatever other school you mentioned. Not to put you down, but these schools have their pick from every well connected, ambitious, highly tutored, rich (not like you and I rich - actually rich) family in DC. Competition is brutal. Pick more than two because you may get disappointed.

- from looking at families like yours and mine, your assumption that kids will not ever need summer care is not a solid one. As your kids get older, their interests will expand, as will their connection to the U.S. They may not WANT to spend all summer elsewhere. YOU may not want to spend all summer elsewhere. If you work, and also if you want to give your kids every advantage, you will have to look into high quality camps because every Sidwell etc family will be doing it as well. Travel for kids starts getting old at around 9 to 10 years of age - this is based on my observations of the families of my colleagues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think there are a few other things you might want to consider.

1) Are you staff or contract employees?

2) I am an economist. Presumably you are too, so don't the recent collapses in pension funds, public and private, give you pause in counting on them as your main funding for retirement?

3) If you are aiming for a university abroad, you will probably want to target International Baccalaureate schools, whether public or private. Applying to university will be much easier. US universities are looking for different things: a broad set of skills, heavy extracurricular involvement to signal motivation etc.

4) My child is at Marie Reed. The teachers at the preschool level had Masters degrees, there are dedicated science classes, and teacher turnover is low. I don't think NCRC can make any of those claims. Private schools in the US offer lower salaries, so teachers tend to be less experienced and turnover is high. What privates do offer is smaller class sizes, which allows for more writing instruction.

5)You have probably read the research (mostly done by economists) that generally finds that about 25 % of the variation in exam results across kids is determined by the school, while home characteristics explain 60% of that variation.

OP here. Thank you for this very insightful info.
We are at the WB and IADB and from what I understand the retirement for people that got in when DH got in have not changed.
We may end up moving before highschool (we may never move... still not sure). I am glad you had such positive experiences at Marie Reed and I agree with you that the teachers are awesome and very competent. However, we have a friend who sent their child to PK3 there and had a horrible experience with the students in the class. The kid never got attention and there were a lot of problematic kids in the class. Our friend said many good things about the teacher, but she also said that the teacher was overwhelmed with the problematic kids in the class and was not able to meaningfully help their child. I am sure Marie Reed is a great school and we have WB friends who love it, we just think it’s not for us. NCRC is only a preschool so they don’t take tests and there is no way to compare the two schools. Finally, I am sure home characteristics are more important than the school kids aren’t, nevertheless school and classmates are very important too so a better school might make a difference (25% in the study you mentioned... not exactly peanuts).

If you are at the WB new plan, you absolutely need to save for retirement. The Bank contributions to your pension will not be enough.

[Anonymous]

Here is another point of reference for you. My DH works elsewhere but we are friends with a Bank-Fund couple. They are a higher grade than you are, and if I had to guess, their HHI would be around 300K tax free. They have two young kids in Washington Episcopalian and decided not to have more because of the cost and what they want to provide for their children. They too own multiple properties in the US and Europe. Just food for thought.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I saw this post on the private board and don’t see how you can raise a family on 130k post-tax income if you have two working parents and need childcare/ help with 2 (maybe 3) kids.

OP here. Just for the sake of conversation... We can and did it with less than 120k for the past few years. First of all we have great benefits and we don’t need to save for retirement or health insurance. My older child has been at her private preschool (18k with no help from work because that starts at 5) for two years now and the younger kid for 1 (16k) and we have a full time live in nanny. Maybe we live very frugally according to American standards: we Ride bikes, have a very old and cheap car, international trips are not expensive for us, I hate eating out so restaurants outings are rare, etc... I don’t feel like we are tight at all, but we are not Americans and are not used to sped the way people do in this country. Life is more expensive here than back home, but higher wages here at least double that difference. Does that answer your questions? Anyway we can do it, the real questions forbid whether we should do it or save the money and invest them
In real estate which is what we have been doing and what my family has done as well.

In light of what's going on at the Bank right now, you'd be foolish to count on lifetime employment so yes, you absolutely do need to save for retirement.

[Anonymous]

I would much rather use my $$ to pay for a US college education for my children than for Beauvoir at kindergarten. Just saying. If your kids are in the US until high school, moving to Europe for college would be an extraordinary culture shock.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I saw this post on the private board and don’t see how you can raise a family on 130k post-tax income if you have two working parents and need childcare/ help with 2 (maybe 3) kids.

OP here. Just for the sake of conversation... We can and did it with less than 120k for the past few years. First of all we have great benefits and we don’t need to save for retirement or health insurance. My older child has been at her private preschool (18k with no help from work because that starts at 5) for two years now and the younger kid for 1 (16k) and we have a full time live in nanny. Maybe we live very frugally according to American standards: we Ride bikes, have a very old and cheap car, international trips are not expensive for us, I hate eating out so restaurants outings are rare, etc... I don’t feel like we are tight at all, but we are not Americans and are not used to sped the way people do in this country. Life is more expensive here than back home, but higher wages here at least double that difference. Does that answer your questions? Anyway we can do it, the real questions forbid whether we should do it or save the money and invest them
In real estate which is what we have been doing and what my family has done as well.

In light of what's going on at the Bank right now, you'd be foolish to count on lifetime employment so yes, you absolutely do need to save for retirement.

This +1,000,000. I'm U.S. and under the new system and I put up to the max under both the voluntary pension and 401k. You would be foolish not to supplement.

I also posted earlier about expanding your k-8 choices. You are dazzled by Beauvoir because of your experience at NCRC but there are many other suitable privates. As another PP said, most people do public until middle or high school at the Bank. Many do public all the way through and save for college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I posted on the private school thread already and someone suggested to ask here too, so here it is.
DH and I get an allowance of about half tuition up to $19,000. We make about 170k after taxes. We have two kids and might have another.
Should we do it? We would not be able to afford $80k per year, but 40k we can do it (60... maybe if my income increases which might double (from 55 after taxes to 90) in a couple of years. What would you do? We are international and travel out of the country to see family twice a year (cheap because usually use miles or trip is paid by DH’s job) once we are there we stay with family. Trips are non-negotiable and a priority for us (we also save money in the summer because kids are in home country for 2-3 months and we don’t ever pay for summer camps. Would you do it at our income level?

We are also planning to move (need a bigger house) and by selling what we have now (we are in DuPont) we can get a bigger house inbound for stoddert, Murch, Lafayette, etc.

We work for international organizations and we have great benefits (pension will be 70% of highest paycheck, home leave money, and we don’t pay taxes except for property taxes).

You got good advice on the school choice issue. I work for the Bank as well and from my experience I can tell you the following three things:

- most people in your situation keep kids in well regarded public elementaries and make the transition to private at middle school or higher level, or move just across the border to MD.

- if you are set on private, you need to expand your choices to more than Sidwell and whatever other school you mentioned. Not to put you down, but these schools have their pick from every well connected, ambitious, highly tutored, rich (not like you and I rich - actually rich) family in DC. Competition is brutal. Pick more than two because you may get disappointed.

- from looking at families like yours and mine, your assumption that kids will not ever need summer care is not a solid one. As your kids get older, their interests will expand, as will their connection to the U.S. They may not WANT to spend all summer elsewhere. YOU may not want to spend all summer elsewhere. If you work, and also if you want to give your kids every advantage, you will have to look into high quality camps because every Sidwell etc family will be doing it as well. Travel for kids starts getting old at around 9 to 10 years of age - this is based on my observations of the families of my colleagues.

OP here. Thanks! Good points!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here is another point of reference for you. My DH works elsewhere but we are friends with a Bank-Fund couple. They are a higher grade than you are, and if I had to guess, their HHI would be around 300K tax free. They have two young kids in Washington Episcopalian and decided not to have more because of the cost and what they want to provide for their children. They too own multiple properties in the US and Europe. Just food for thought.

OP here. Thanks! We are debating a third for those reasons and also because I am now getting back to the workforce (after a PhD). We are also quite young (for WB’s standards) so we have several decades before we would need to retire (I am 32 and DH is 38).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I saw this post on the private board and don’t see how you can raise a family on 130k post-tax income if you have two working parents and need childcare/ help with 2 (maybe 3) kids.

OP here. Just for the sake of conversation... We can and did it with less than 120k for the past few years. First of all we have great benefits and we don’t need to save for retirement or health insurance. My older child has been at her private preschool (18k with no help from work because that starts at 5) for two years now and the younger kid for 1 (16k) and we have a full time live in nanny. Maybe we live very frugally according to American standards: we Ride bikes, have a very old and cheap car, international trips are not expensive for us, I hate eating out so restaurants outings are rare, etc... I don’t feel like we are tight at all, but we are not Americans and are not used to sped the way people do in this country. Life is more expensive here than back home, but higher wages here at least double that difference. Does that answer your questions? Anyway we can do it, the real questions forbid whether we should do it or save the money and invest them
In real estate which is what we have been doing and what my family has done as well.

In light of what's going on at the Bank right now, you'd be foolish to count on lifetime employment so yes, you absolutely do need to save for retirement.

This +1,000,000. I'm U.S. and under the new system and I put up to the max under both the voluntary pension and 401k. You would be foolish not to supplement.

I also posted earlier about expanding your k-8 choices. You are dazzled by Beauvoir because of your experience at NCRC but there are many other suitable privates. As another PP said, most people do public until middle or high school at the Bank. Many do public all the way through and save for college.

Good points. We are also planning to supplement with rental incomes from properties we own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think there are a few other things you might want to consider.

1) Are you staff or contract employees?

2) I am an economist. Presumably you are too, so don't the recent collapses in pension funds, public and private, give you pause in counting on them as your main funding for retirement?

3) If you are aiming for a university abroad, you will probably want to target International Baccalaureate schools, whether public or private. Applying to university will be much easier. US universities are looking for different things: a broad set of skills, heavy extracurricular involvement to signal motivation etc.

4) My child is at Marie Reed. The teachers at the preschool level had Masters degrees, there are dedicated science classes, and teacher turnover is low. I don't think NCRC can make any of those claims. Private schools in the US offer lower salaries, so teachers tend to be less experienced and turnover is high. What privates do offer is smaller class sizes, which allows for more writing instruction.

5)You have probably read the research (mostly done by economists) that generally finds that about 25 % of the variation in exam results across kids is determined by the school, while home characteristics explain 60% of that variation.

What about the remaining 15%?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think there are a few other things you might want to consider.

1) Are you staff or contract employees?

2) I am an economist. Presumably you are too, so don't the recent collapses in pension funds, public and private, give you pause in counting on them as your main funding for retirement?

3) If you are aiming for a university abroad, you will probably want to target International Baccalaureate schools, whether public or private. Applying to university will be much easier. US universities are looking for different things: a broad set of skills, heavy extracurricular involvement to signal motivation etc.

4) My child is at Marie Reed. The teachers at the preschool level had Masters degrees, there are dedicated science classes, and teacher turnover is low. I don't think NCRC can make any of those claims. Private schools in the US offer lower salaries, so teachers tend to be less experienced and turnover is high. What privates do offer is smaller class sizes, which allows for more writing instruction.

5)You have probably read the research (mostly done by economists) that generally finds that about 25 % of the variation in exam results across kids is determined by the school, while home characteristics explain 60% of that variation.

What about the remaining 15%?

Don’t know much about the study in question, but perhaps IQ or some form of intelligence, personality, etc. Something not determined by school or family.