Anyone with HHI of 160-170k send kids to private?

[Anonymous]

Our HHI is WAY more than that and we have three kids in a private that costs almost 40K each that is 120 K a year. No way we could do it it we made 200K Maybe at a catholic but the Big three all run close to 40 K a year in HS.
It's obscene. We feel like we are struggling to pay for our three at what should be a great salary.

[Anonymous]

We did. It was a combination of small private school and sport's academy. DS had insane anxiety, we don't regret it. I don't think he could have done well or at all at a large public HS in the DMV. DS acts like a combat zone veteran due to his anxiety, everything is a mine field. It was a financial hardship. I don't recommend it unless you have to due to some SN. Sport helped with it too, something about raising his dopamine and seratonine since SSRIs were terrible for him. Side effects from hell as a teen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP again - I see you are concerned about your kids feeling like they have less. One thing I've found is that living in a truly working class neighborhood means that my kid can never think "everyone has more than me." He sees that many people at school have more than him, but that he has more than most people in our neighborhood. And mostly he just doesn't care. He has been in private school for 8 years now, and it is a non-issue.

I could not agree more with this statement. I make less than 100k as a single parent, but earn a great income in our neighborhood. DC also attends neighborhood camps. It’s really not an issue. It might be a different story if we were also living in an UMC neighborhood. We have police, firefighters, govt workers, and teachers as immediate neighbors, plus folks for work in retail and fast food nearby.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:We made twice this and had to pull our two kids out of private because it just wasn't doable on that income. We bought our house a long time ago, so also have a low mortgage and no other debt.

If you make twice the income and couldn't do privates, something is wrong and no, you didn't have a low mortgage or something is terrible off.

It just depends on how much of a priority private is. PP clearly could afford private on an HHI of $300-350k if it was a priority. But tuition for two kids could be $80k and that takes a serious bite out of an income, even in that range. You wouldn't have to have a particularly extravagant lifestyle to be tight if you take $80k post-tax right off the top, particularly if you want to make sure you are saving a healthy amount. I assume PP wasn't willing to make major sacrifices on house, savings, vacations, etc to make private work -- and that's ok -- just as it is ok for the people who do make it a priority.

I make those sacrificies and I still struggle!!! PITI is around 4K.

And, that is why. You bought an expensive house. Our mortgage is $2. You are not making the sacrifices you think you are.

Or maybe we did not make a huge down payment -because we couldn’t. Houses in this area are very expensive.

If your PITI is $4K, you have an expensive house. Even if you only put 3% down, that's still a home cost of at least $600K-$700K. When people say they made sacrifices, they mean they did not buy the single-family house or the house in the nicer neighborhood or the house with more than one bathroom or the house with the backyard or the house with the commute under an hour. It's totally reasonable to have opted to pay more to have those things--but there were absolutely options for less money that came with those tradeoffs. For some, it's worthwhile to give those things up to have money to pay for private (or to be able to travel, or to be able to live closer in, or...)

600K is not an expensive house in this area. At all.

It is the median home price right now for DC, meaning that half of the houses out there sell for less than that. Therefore, there are many options that cost less than $600K. And that's the highest median home price in DC's history, so if PP bought before this year, the median was likely more like $300K-$400K, so $600K was "expensive" if the metric is how many available homes cost less than that. Most did before the last couple of years.

Give that PP HHI is well above the median, it is not an expensive house....

It's a perfectly reasonable house for PP to own at that HHI. But PP is frustrated that she can't also comfortably afford private with that mortgage, and others are chiming in that they bought or rent less expensive homes (and presumably sacrificed location, size, commutes, and other things that contribute to house cost) to do so at similar HHIs. That's the point. PP opted not to do this, and that is also fine, but one result of that is less disposable income. If you know you want to pay for private and you don't have a $200K+ HHI, that means limiting your budget in other areas to do so. We know many families at DC's school who are in small 2BR apartments and at least one family of four in a 1BR apartment who make it work by living in much smaller spaces than they could afford if they were not paying tuition. That's a choice they've made for their own families. Others, with the same HHI constraints, choose a more comfortable home and forgo private school. Different strokes for different folks.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:We make in that range. We get some aid - but not a lot. Have friends with a lot more money - bigger houses - nice vacations....but also have friends in the same bracket. Nobody cares. Someone in admissions once told me that 25% are on aid, 25% have grandparents help etc. and 50% write the check without even thinking about it.

Thank you! I guess I never thought we might be eligible for financial aid. Will look into that.

you are well into the top 5% of incomes in America and want aid????

Schools regret than they don’t get more applicants needing 25-50% aid.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:We made twice this and had to pull our two kids out of private because it just wasn't doable on that income. We bought our house a long time ago, so also have a low mortgage and no other debt.

If you make twice the income and couldn't do privates, something is wrong and no, you didn't have a low mortgage or something is terrible off.

It just depends on how much of a priority private is. PP clearly could afford private on an HHI of $300-350k if it was a priority. But tuition for two kids could be $80k and that takes a serious bite out of an income, even in that range. You wouldn't have to have a particularly extravagant lifestyle to be tight if you take $80k post-tax right off the top, particularly if you want to make sure you are saving a healthy amount. I assume PP wasn't willing to make major sacrifices on house, savings, vacations, etc to make private work -- and that's ok -- just as it is ok for the people who do make it a priority.

I make those sacrificies and I still struggle!!! PITI is around 4K.

And, that is why. You bought an expensive house. Our mortgage is $2. You are not making the sacrifices you think you are.

Or maybe we did not make a huge down payment -because we couldn’t. Houses in this area are very expensive.

If your PITI is $4K, you have an expensive house. Even if you only put 3% down, that's still a home cost of at least $600K-$700K. When people say they made sacrifices, they mean they did not buy the single-family house or the house in the nicer neighborhood or the house with more than one bathroom or the house with the backyard or the house with the commute under an hour. It's totally reasonable to have opted to pay more to have those things--but there were absolutely options for less money that came with those tradeoffs. For some, it's worthwhile to give those things up to have money to pay for private (or to be able to travel, or to be able to live closer in, or...)

600K is not an expensive house in this area. At all.

It is the median home price right now for DC, meaning that half of the houses out there sell for less than that. Therefore, there are many options that cost less than $600K. And that's the highest median home price in DC's history, so if PP bought before this year, the median was likely more like $300K-$400K, so $600K was "expensive" if the metric is how many available homes cost less than that. Most did before the last couple of years.

Give that PP HHI is well above the median, it is not an expensive house....

It's a perfectly reasonable house for PP to own at that HHI. But PP is frustrated that she can't also comfortably afford private with that mortgage, and others are chiming in that they bought or rent less expensive homes (and presumably sacrificed location, size, commutes, and other things that contribute to house cost) to do so at similar HHIs. That's the point. PP opted not to do this, and that is also fine, but one result of that is less disposable income. If you know you want to pay for private and you don't have a $200K+ HHI, that means limiting your budget in other areas to do so. We know many families at DC's school who are in small 2BR apartments and at least one family of four in a 1BR apartment who make it work by living in much smaller spaces than they could afford if they were not paying tuition. That's a choice they've made for their own families. Others, with the same HHI constraints, choose a more comfortable home and forgo private school. Different strokes for different folks.

I am the 4K PITI poster. I said we are well above OP HHI and we struggle to make it work. My point was that with 160K it would be very difficult to make it work. I shared our PITI to put things in perspective.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our HHI is WAY more than that and we have three kids in a private that costs almost 40K each that is 120 K a year. No way we could do it it we made 200K Maybe at a catholic but the Big three all run close to 40 K a year in HS.
It's obscene. We feel like we are struggling to pay for our three at what should be a great salary.

This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

you are well into the top 5% of incomes in America and want aid????

That's just empirically untrue. $170K is more like 77%ile for the DC area. https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-by-state-calculator/ . Still nothing to sneeze at, but come on--5%?

Poster didn’t say DC. He/she said “ America”

[Anonymous]

My husband and I make $190k. We have two kids, 1st grade and 3rd grade. Their school is about $20k per child. We get 35% off each. It equates to $12,500 per child for tuition. We pay about $25,000 total.

[Anonymous]

We have two kids at a private religious school, plus one child in daycare, and spend about $30,000/year on the three of them after financial aid for school. Our HHI is about $155K. We live in an area of MoCo that doesn't have great public schools, but the houses start at about $450K for 4 bedrooms. My commute to DC is 30 minutes w/o traffic one-way or 50 minutes in the heaviest rush hour. We still save some for retirement and save money in our bank account in case of an emergency. We don't take fancy vacations, buy expensive clothing, or eat out at restaurants much. I don't think we could spring for full tuition plus daycare (a cost of about $45K/year), but we can afford what we're paying and still not have anxiety over money. I don't think we'd be comfortable if we were in a more expensive house, though, especially with a large chunk of our gross income going to school/daycare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband and I make $190k. We have two kids, 1st grade and 3rd grade. Their school is about $20k per child. We get 35% off each. It equates to $12,500 per child for tuition. We pay about $25,000 total.

Catholic?

[Anonymous]

And, that is why. You bought an expensive house. Our mortgage is $2. You are not making the sacrifices you think you are.
Or maybe we did not make a huge down payment -because we couldn’t. Houses in this area are very expensive.

If your PITI is $4K, you have an expensive house. Even if you only put 3% down, that's still a home cost of at least $600K-$700K. When people say they made sacrifices, they mean they did not buy the single-family house or the house in the nicer neighborhood or the house with more than one bathroom or the house with the backyard or the house with the commute under an hour. It's totally reasonable to have opted to pay more to have those things--but there were absolutely options for less money that came with those tradeoffs. For some, it's worthwhile to give those things up to have money to pay for private (or to be able to travel, or to be able to live closer in, or...)

600K is not an expensive house in this area. At all.

It is the median home price right now for DC, meaning that half of the houses out there sell for less than that. Therefore, there are many options that cost less than $600K. And that's the highest median home price in DC's history, so if PP bought before this year, the median was likely more like $300K-$400K, so $600K was "expensive" if the metric is how many available homes cost less than that. Most did before the last couple of years.
Give that PP HHI is well above the median, it is not an expensive house....

It's a perfectly reasonable house for PP to own at that HHI. But PP is frustrated that she can't also comfortably afford private with that mortgage, and others are chiming in that they bought or rent less expensive homes (and presumably sacrificed location, size, commutes, and other things that contribute to house cost) to do so at similar HHIs. That's the point. PP opted not to do this, and that is also fine, but one result of that is less disposable income. If you know you want to pay for private and you don't have a $200K+ HHI, that means limiting your budget in other areas to do so. We know many families at DC's school who are in small 2BR apartments and at least one family of four in a 1BR apartment who make it work by living in much smaller spaces than they could afford if they were not paying tuition. That's a choice they've made for their own families. Others, with the same HHI constraints, choose a more comfortable home and forgo private school. Different strokes for different folks.
I am the 4K PITI poster. I said we are well above OP HHI and we struggle to make it work. My point was that with 160K it would be very difficult to make it work. I shared our PITI to put things in perspective.

You struggle to make it work because of your choices. You could make it work but your priority is a nice house. We could do our child at a $40K school and may in the future. We have the cash to pay off our house (on the income stated) and could use our mortgage money to pay for school. We comfortably put a decent chunk away for college now. We have paid $15K in the past for a small private school and it was no big deal. You are not struggling but its your values and choices you make. We live comfortably and can basically do what we want on that income as we have a smaller house.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband and I make $190k. We have two kids, 1st grade and 3rd grade. Their school is about $20k per child. We get 35% off each. It equates to $12,500 per child for tuition. We pay about $25,000 total.

Catholic?

Not Catholic. Independent. I'm actually looking at the paperwork. We get $6,500 off of each kid and in addition, one kids gets 10% off as a sibling. And tuition is not $20K. It's 23K per child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We would like to (it will be a big stretch), but I don’t want my kids to feel like they have less than everyone else around them.
Would most likely be parochial vs. independent.

Thanks for any insight/experience!

Absolutely but they often get financial aid if it’s a big 3.