household income of 250K to send kids to private school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Wow. I can't believe that after indebting yourself with massive student loans that you'd make the same mistake again in spending too much money on education. Requiring an entire salary to pay for education is ridiculous.

Anonymous wrote:

You're a complete moron. You should instead spend the money on living in a good school district as you'll get your money back one day when you sell your home. Wasting thousands a month on tuition is criminal unless you can also contribute significantly to private brokerage accounts and other forms of savings. You can't afford private school if it requires such a financial sacrifice.

My in-laws did something similar and are still working in old age. Whereas I attended public school and my parents saved heavily. My parents are living the good life in retirement and I've arguably done better than my spouse professionally even though the inlaws spend close to $1 million in private education and mine spent $0.

I'm the PP with the 190 hhi and 2 kids.

Three points:

1. Yes, it's a huge expenditure. We might regret the decision later, given what the same money could buy for us. And we may eventually switch to public. We will be revisiting the question every few years. So I will ignore the overly aggressive word choice, and concede to the core point that it is a significant decision on our part to pay tuition.

2. While the financial impact of the decision to go private is more obvious at our income point, I'm not sure the argument that private isn't worth the money applies particularly or uniquely to our situation. If it is just plain not worth the money, as one of the PPs at least has implied, then it is not worth the money to anybody - including those with twice the income. The rub, of course, is that most people who post to the private/independent school forum do think there is some kind of added value, at least for particular students. When that is true, or parents think it is true, this question becomes live: what one is willing to trade? Is the price too high? Once a family's needs for shelter, health insurance, food, transportation, and modest savings are met, this becomes a deeply personal question.

3. Putting aside our specific example, families with significant disposable income (income over what they need to cover essential needs) routinely make decisions that amount to "lifestyle" or "personal" choices. In our case, it would be legit, and probably very smart, to be investing the second one. But a lot of families in our position would elect to have a stay at home parent. I personally elect to keep my career and it pleases me to fund my children's tuition.

My point is not to offer our model as the correct model. My point is just that it makes sense to break down one's individual finances and be in touch with what one wants.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure what we're doing differently than everybody else.

We have a HHI of about $300K. We send our kid to public, but could easily do private out of pocket. We have a second home (inherited) that we pay to maintain. We take an international trip every year or two. We own a small boat. Our house is about $1.1M with a $550K mortgage, and we drive a 2015 Toyota that we paid cash for. We eat out far too much and seem to buy our one teenage kid way too many clothes (had to take a bunch to goodwill recently to make room for new acquisitions).

We have a fully funded college fund and may out IRA and 401K through work. We put probably $25K a year into fixing up our house, and last year we pre-paid $50K on our mortgage balance. We'll likely do the same again this year.

What do people spend all their money on?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure what we're doing differently than everybody else.

We have a HHI of about $300K. We send our kid to public, but could easily do private out of pocket. We have a second home (inherited) that we pay to maintain. We take an international trip every year or two. We own a small boat. Our house is about $1.1M with a $550K mortgage, and we drive a 2015 Toyota that we paid cash for. We eat out far too much and seem to buy our one teenage kid way too many clothes (had to take a bunch to goodwill recently to make room for new acquisitions).

We have a fully funded college fund and may out IRA and 401K through work. We put probably $25K a year into fixing up our house, and last year we pre-paid $50K on our mortgage balance. We'll likely do the same again this year.

What do people spend all their money on?

What's your whole budget? Would love to learn from you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure what we're doing differently than everybody else.

We have a HHI of about $300K. We send our kid to public, but could easily do private out of pocket. We have a second home (inherited) that we pay to maintain. We take an international trip every year or two. We own a small boat. Our house is about $1.1M with a $550K mortgage, and we drive a 2015 Toyota that we paid cash for. We eat out far too much and seem to buy our one teenage kid way too many clothes (had to take a bunch to goodwill recently to make room for new acquisitions).

We have a fully funded college fund and may out IRA and 401K through work. We put probably $25K a year into fixing up our house, and last year we pre-paid $50K on our mortgage balance. We'll likely do the same again this year.

What do people spend all their money on?

How much would your house be now if you were buying? That's most likely what others are spending their money on at your salary - the mortgage for the same house at a higher price!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure what we're doing differently than everybody else.

We have a HHI of about $300K. We send our kid to public, but could easily do private out of pocket. We have a second home (inherited) that we pay to maintain. We take an international trip every year or two. We own a small boat. Our house is about $1.1M with a $550K mortgage, and we drive a 2015 Toyota that we paid cash for. We eat out far too much and seem to buy our one teenage kid way too many clothes (had to take a bunch to goodwill recently to make room for new acquisitions).

We have a fully funded college fund and may out IRA and 401K through work. We put probably $25K a year into fixing up our house, and last year we pre-paid $50K on our mortgage balance. We'll likely do the same again this year.

What do people spend all their money on?

Having more than one kid, for starters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure what we're doing differently than everybody else.

We have a HHI of about $300K. We send our kid to public, but could easily do private out of pocket. We have a second home (inherited) that we pay to maintain. We take an international trip every year or two. We own a small boat. Our house is about $1.1M with a $550K mortgage, and we drive a 2015 Toyota that we paid cash for. We eat out far too much and seem to buy our one teenage kid way too many clothes (had to take a bunch to goodwill recently to make room for new acquisitions).

We have a fully funded college fund and may out IRA and 401K through work. We put probably $25K a year into fixing up our house, and last year we pre-paid $50K on our mortgage balance. We'll likely do the same again this year.

What do people spend all their money on?

Having more than one kid, for starters.

Yeah, our lives would look a lot different with one teenager. We make pretty good money too. But with a kid in Kindergarten, a preschooler and baby ...we don't have an extra $50k to pay down the mortgage. I went to Catholic schools my whole life. But that was in the Midwest in the 1980s, when those private schools were full of kids whose parents were teachers, electricians, auto workers, etc. The paradigm has completely shifted. I truly believe in the value of private and parochial schools. But there's no way we'd qualify for any sort of aid, and I'd be a damn fool to drop $80,000 to 120,000 a year on three kids going to private school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure what we're doing differently than everybody else.

We have a HHI of about $300K. We send our kid to public, but could easily do private out of pocket. We have a second home (inherited) that we pay to maintain. We take an international trip every year or two. We own a small boat. Our house is about $1.1M with a $550K mortgage, and we drive a 2015 Toyota that we paid cash for. We eat out far too much and seem to buy our one teenage kid way too many clothes (had to take a bunch to goodwill recently to make room for new acquisitions).

We have a fully funded college fund and may out IRA and 401K through work. We put probably $25K a year into fixing up our house, and last year we pre-paid $50K on our mortgage balance. We'll likely do the same again this year.

What do people spend all their money on?

Having more than one kid, for starters.

Yeah, our lives would look a lot different with one teenager. We make pretty good money too. But with a kid in Kindergarten, a preschooler and baby ...we don't have an extra $50k to pay down the mortgage. I went to Catholic schools my whole life. But that was in the Midwest in the 1980s, when those private schools were full of kids whose parents were teachers, electricians, auto workers, etc. The paradigm has completely shifted. I truly believe in the value of private and parochial schools. But there's no way we'd qualify for any sort of aid, and I'd be a damn fool to drop $80,000 to 120,000 a year on three kids going to private school.

Our parish school is $13k for 3 kids. No where near $80-120k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure what we're doing differently than everybody else.

We have a HHI of about $300K. We send our kid to public, but could easily do private out of pocket. We have a second home (inherited) that we pay to maintain. We take an international trip every year or two. We own a small boat. Our house is about $1.1M with a $550K mortgage, and we drive a 2015 Toyota that we paid cash for. We eat out far too much and seem to buy our one teenage kid way too many clothes (had to take a bunch to goodwill recently to make room for new acquisitions).

We have a fully funded college fund and may out IRA and 401K through work. We put probably $25K a year into fixing up our house, and last year we pre-paid $50K on our mortgage balance. We'll likely do the same again this year.

What do people spend all their money on?

How much would your house be now if you were buying? That's most likely what others are spending their money on at your salary - the mortgage for the same house at a higher price!!

I cannot imagine having 1.1 million dollar house on that income.

[Anonymous]

We are not in DC and where we live the top prep schools are at $30k, which makes them more manageable. We were privately educated and would like to provide the same for our two kids. But even so spending 60k in tuition out of an 250k income is a topic that comes up a lot in our household as the oldest enters k in 2019. Do we apply to private schools this fall for 2019 k entry or go the very good neighborhood public elementary school route and defer private for 6th? We're lucky we have that option. But middle / high school options are not so great.

Ideally I'd love to have kids enter private from k onward as I did as a child, and we could do it and still afford the mortgage, healthy savings and investments and still have a nice trip every year or so, especially as we're quite frugal on day to day expenditures. We don't eat out often and have a firm control on discretionary spending that seems to eat up so many people's incomes. But, and this is the big but, life has a tendency to throw nasty curveballs every now and then. I've recently been diagnosed with badly receding gums and the treatment will probably cost $30k. Who knows what issues will come up in our older house? Then there's college savings. It's become increasingly clear to me the genuine advantage of having very healthy savings and investment portfolios to mitigate the shock surprises of life.

So what we'll probably do is to enroll the kids at the neighborhood elementary and defer private till 6th grade. We'll put aside the money we'd have spent on tuition into our savings and investment accounts and use that to defray the cost of private schools from 6-12 when hopefully our incomes will be larger too. Interestingly enough I've talked recently to several of our older neighbors who have said that up through 2005 or so, the neighborhood was solidly private school territory, but now so many of the young families are going through the public school route for elementary and waiting till 6th and even 9th grade for private schools, and they've pointed out that the lower school divisions of the surrounding private schools have declined in size while their middle and upper schools are very robust. This is just the new reality for those of us in the 200-300k income bracket as educational costs have seriously outpaced inflation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure what we're doing differently than everybody else.

We have a HHI of about $300K. We send our kid to public, but could easily do private out of pocket. We have a second home (inherited) that we pay to maintain. We take an international trip every year or two. We own a small boat. Our house is about $1.1M with a $550K mortgage, and we drive a 2015 Toyota that we paid cash for. We eat out far too much and seem to buy our one teenage kid way too many clothes (had to take a bunch to goodwill recently to make room for new acquisitions).

We have a fully funded college fund and may out IRA and 401K through work. We put probably $25K a year into fixing up our house, and last year we pre-paid $50K on our mortgage balance. We'll likely do the same again this year.

What do people spend all their money on?

Childcare, camp, therapies, and sports are what make it tight for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure what we're doing differently than everybody else.

We have a HHI of about $300K. We send our kid to public, but could easily do private out of pocket. We have a second home (inherited) that we pay to maintain. We take an international trip every year or two. We own a small boat. Our house is about $1.1M with a $550K mortgage, and we drive a 2015 Toyota that we paid cash for. We eat out far too much and seem to buy our one teenage kid way too many clothes (had to take a bunch to goodwill recently to make room for new acquisitions).

We have a fully funded college fund and may out IRA and 401K through work. We put probably $25K a year into fixing up our house, and last year we pre-paid $50K on our mortgage balance. We'll likely do the same again this year.

What do people spend all their money on?

What's your whole budget? Would love to learn from you.

So how would you easily pay? With the 50k you are using to prepay your mortgage? I agree with others that having only one kid makes a difference. For example, among the many expenses, you would need to find a second college education if you had two kids. And of course private would be twice as expensive. Plus, you only have one car. Many people need two for various reasons. Finally, you make more than 250k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure what we're doing differently than everybody else.

We have a HHI of about $300K. We send our kid to public, but could easily do private out of pocket. We have a second home (inherited) that we pay to maintain. We take an international trip every year or two. We own a small boat. Our house is about $1.1M with a $550K mortgage, and we drive a 2015 Toyota that we paid cash for. We eat out far too much and seem to buy our one teenage kid way too many clothes (had to take a bunch to goodwill recently to make room for new acquisitions).

We have a fully funded college fund and may out IRA and 401K through work. We put probably $25K a year into fixing up our house, and last year we pre-paid $50K on our mortgage balance. We'll likely do the same again this year.

What do people spend all their money on?

Having more than one kid, for starters.

Yeah, our lives would look a lot different with one teenager. We make pretty good money too. But with a kid in Kindergarten, a preschooler and baby ...we don't have an extra $50k to pay down the mortgage. I went to Catholic schools my whole life. But that was in the Midwest in the 1980s, when those private schools were full of kids whose parents were teachers, electricians, auto workers, etc. The paradigm has completely shifted. I truly believe in the value of private and parochial schools. But there's no way we'd qualify for any sort of aid, and I'd be a damn fool to drop $80,000 to 120,000 a year on three kids going to private school.

Our parish school is $13k for 3 kids. No where near $80-120k.

$13k? I can assure you that price is more of an exception, not the rule.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure what we're doing differently than everybody else.

We have a HHI of about $300K. We send our kid to public, but could easily do private out of pocket. We have a second home (inherited) that we pay to maintain. We take an international trip every year or two. We own a small boat. Our house is about $1.1M with a $550K mortgage, and we drive a 2015 Toyota that we paid cash for. We eat out far too much and seem to buy our one teenage kid way too many clothes (had to take a bunch to goodwill recently to make room for new acquisitions).

We have a fully funded college fund and may out IRA and 401K through work. We put probably $25K a year into fixing up our house, and last year we pre-paid $50K on our mortgage balance. We'll likely do the same again this year.

What do people spend all their money on?

Having more than one kid, for starters.

Yeah, our lives would look a lot different with one teenager. We make pretty good money too. But with a kid in Kindergarten, a preschooler and baby ...we don't have an extra $50k to pay down the mortgage. I went to Catholic schools my whole life. But that was in the Midwest in the 1980s, when those private schools were full of kids whose parents were teachers, electricians, auto workers, etc. The paradigm has completely shifted. I truly believe in the value of private and parochial schools. But there's no way we'd qualify for any sort of aid, and I'd be a damn fool to drop $80,000 to 120,000 a year on three kids going to private school.

Our parish school is $13k for 3 kids. No where near $80-120k.

$13k? I can assure you that price is more of an exception, not the rule.

No it’s not. For example:

http://stann.org/wp-content/uploads/2017-2018-k-8-tuition-rates-1.pdf
https://www.stlouisschool.org/apps/pages/tuition
https://www.saintjamesschool.org/admissions/tuition
http://www.smsva.org/admissions/tuition-and-fees

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure what we're doing differently than everybody else.

We have a HHI of about $300K. We send our kid to public, but could easily do private out of pocket. We have a second home (inherited) that we pay to maintain. We take an international trip every year or two. We own a small boat. Our house is about $1.1M with a $550K mortgage, and we drive a 2015 Toyota that we paid cash for. We eat out far too much and seem to buy our one teenage kid way too many clothes (had to take a bunch to goodwill recently to make room for new acquisitions).

We have a fully funded college fund and may out IRA and 401K through work. We put probably $25K a year into fixing up our house, and last year we pre-paid $50K on our mortgage balance. We'll likely do the same again this year.

What do people spend all their money on?

Having more than one kid, for starters.

Yeah, our lives would look a lot different with one teenager. We make pretty good money too. But with a kid in Kindergarten, a preschooler and baby ...we don't have an extra $50k to pay down the mortgage. I went to Catholic schools my whole life. But that was in the Midwest in the 1980s, when those private schools were full of kids whose parents were teachers, electricians, auto workers, etc. The paradigm has completely shifted. I truly believe in the value of private and parochial schools. But there's no way we'd qualify for any sort of aid, and I'd be a damn fool to drop $80,000 to 120,000 a year on three kids going to private school.

Our parish school is $13k for 3 kids. No where near $80-120k.

$13k? I can assure you that price is more of an exception, not the rule.

No it’s not. For example:

http://stann.org/wp-content/uploads/2017-2018-k-8-tuition-rates-1.pdf
https://www.stlouisschool.org/apps/pages/tuition
https://www.saintjamesschool.org/admissions/tuition
http://www.smsva.org/admissions/tuition-and-fees

I don't even know where those schools are -- not in DC for sure though.

[Anonymous]

I know many folks here have a DC-centric mindset, but you'd be surprised at how many non-$40K/year private schools exist in the suburbs. Are they the Big 3? Of course not, but plenty are perfectly serviceable and the more expensive schools remain an option in later years.