How rich are private school parents?

[Anonymous]

I think we earn enough to afford private, but we are just another ordinary dual income professionals in the area, and we live in a very modest house

Can someone tell me what majority of private school families are like financially? I don’t want our kid to feel that he’s the poorest one in the class

[Anonymous]

It's a range. Some are on FA (from 100% to 10%), and HHI goes from little upwards of many millions. Pick a school with uniforms, it makes it less obvious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's a range. Some are on FA (from 100% to 10%), and HHI goes from little upwards of many millions. Pick a school with uniforms, it makes it less obvious.

FWIW, we're right in the middle, I think. Hard to know, and don't care.

[Anonymous]

This may sound totally weird, but could be of some use: we are on the lower end of income for our class (HHI 200k), and I feel like this does set us and those of similar incomes apart, but not at all in a bad way. I find that people go out of their way to be nice to us and to invite us to things in part, I think, because they would be mortified with themselves if they didn't. This is GDS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think we earn enough to afford private, but we are just another ordinary dual income professionals in the area, and we live in a very modest house

Can someone tell me what majority of private school families are like financially? I don’t want our kid to feel that he’s the poorest one in the class

Many are paying with wealth, not annual ordinary income (HHI). Many have grandparents gifting >$14ks/year to each kid, many have trust funds allowing for monthly payments, many have large bonus or equity payment jobs and they just set aside $500k per kid for K-12 and another $500k per kid for college.

We could not mentally stomach rising K-12 costs until we physically carved out some money, kept it in Vanguard and went on with our other retirement savings goals and lives. No way to cut it, it will set you back $500k per child and that's before factoring in opportunity cost.

My guess is at $200k HHI you'd get some financial assistance. Many people also purposely try to work at a private school, in any role, in order to get free or discounted tuition remissions.

[Anonymous]

You could still receive financial aid at 200k HHI?

[Anonymous]

I think there's a large range. FWIW, it hasn't even occurred to me to contemplate the HHI of any other family. It's just not an issue. Frankly, I would prefer to have a range of HHIs represented rather than have a bunch of overly privileged rich kids grouped together.

[Anonymous]

Realistically, for a family with more than one child in private, it would be a financial strain if HHI were much lower than $400K. Sure some families do it on less, but most people opt out unless their income is high enough. So based on that, I would say a majority of families are making at least $400-500K.

[Anonymous]

I attended a private elementary school for three years on full financial aid and a top boarding high school school for four years on about 2/3 financial aid.

At the elementary school I did feel awkward and only hung out with the other few kids in my demographic. It was exacerbated by the fact that we were all from another country and stuck out culturally too. Plus we lived in "bad" neighborhoods as compared to the other kids, so that created additional obstacles in terms of playdates and stuff. I was much happier socially when I switched to public school.

In high school, I didn't feel bothered at all by my family's status and easily made friends. My parents had crossed into middle class by that point and I had spent years at a public school that included many UMC and some UC kids, so I was much more culturally prepared.

I think your kids will be fine, given what you say about your jobs and income. They may not always be able to afford everything their friends can, but they will probably fit in fine.

[Anonymous]

Our kids go to Sidwell. Our two working parent HHI is about 400; that's total gross HHI before deductions for taxes, healthcare, retirement, mortgage, tuition, etc. Our house is worth about 750. We have no financial aid from the school or grantparents or anything like that; just paying our own way. We consider ourselves really lucky and blessed, and quite frankly successful to be able to pay for an expensive luxury like private school. I think we're about average/median for the school. Plenty of families are far wealthier, but plenty are less fortunate. HTH. Take my opinions with a grain of salt though, because I can only guess at how other families are doing financially. But fwiw, I never have felt out of place.

[Anonymous]

Our HHI is about $210K. We have kids in Catholic school. Tuition is about $22k each plus expenses. No financial aid, but both got merit aid (one about 60% off, the other 25%).

They will need to earn merit aid if they expect to go out of state for college.

[Anonymous]

I don't think it is a matter of feeling out of place with less money, but just whether you are willing to bear the financial burden at home! There are some things like expensive study abroad that we aren't doing and of course it is always nice to hear about people's summers at Martha's Vineyard, but this is not a real practical issue for the kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Realistically, for a family with more than one child in private, it would be a financial strain if HHI were much lower than $400K. Sure some families do it on less, but most people opt out unless their income is high enough. So based on that, I would say a majority of families are making at least $400-500K.

I see this a lot, but many privates aren’t that much more expensive than daycare. Yes, it is a huge expense, but I think people could afford it on much less than $400k per year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our kids go to Sidwell. Our two working parent HHI is about 400; that's total gross HHI before deductions for taxes, healthcare, retirement, mortgage, tuition, etc. Our house is worth about 750. We have no financial aid from the school or grantparents or anything like that; just paying our own way. We consider ourselves really lucky and blessed, and quite frankly successful to be able to pay for an expensive luxury like private school. I think we're about average/median for the school. Plenty of families are far wealthier, but plenty are less fortunate. HTH. Take my opinions with a grain of salt though, because I can only guess at how other families are doing financially. But fwiw, I never have felt out of place.

This is exactly us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Realistically, for a family with more than one child in private, it would be a financial strain if HHI were much lower than $400K. Sure some families do it on less, but most people opt out unless their income is high enough. So based on that, I would say a majority of families are making at least $400-500K.

I see this a lot, but many privates aren’t that much more expensive than daycare. Yes, it is a huge expense, but I think people could afford it on much less than $400k per year.

This is a good point that I hadn't thought of. We aren't in a big elite private, just a regular parochial HS in an outer 'burb, and we pay the same as what we were paying -- 10 years ago! -- for daycare. We're definitely less than $400K per year.