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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No, it is not simple. You should do a real assessment of your finances and be honest with yourself about what year you can afford to start and begin applying in that year.

This will also force you to evaluate whether or not you can even afford the option at all.[/quote]

OP here. We have a HHI of $750k or higher (depending on bonuses and stock performance). Our current PITI is <$3k with a mortgage we could pay off tomorrow if we wanted to, but we don't because it's 3.5%. For us the money is there, we just have to decide if we want to spend it on private school for 2 kids or a mortgage on a new pricey house with a good in bounds. We're genuinely very torn. We love our DC public and aren't very competitive people, we just want our kids to be happy, well rounded, and reasonably challenged academically.

So it's less about whether the money is there and more about whether this is how we want to spend it. This thread has been really helpful though, so thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to reply. [/quote]

I truly don't understand why you would muck around with DCPS or public charters past like 3rd grade. I am also not a competitive person and I get not wanting to send kids to Big 3 type environments. But there are lots of private schools that have nurturing environments with strong academics and basically none of the random BS you find in even the best DCPS schools. I guess it's nice to send kids to a neighborhood school and to have friends in the neighborhood. So maybe you do that for PK and a couple years of elementary. But especially on CH people will start peeling off for private or charters like Latin or BASIS by late elementary anyway. So why wait for that to happen when it might impact your ability to get into the school you want -- just go.

This is not a know on DCPS but I just can't imagine rolling the dice in this way by waiting if you know that you're going to want private anyway and can definitely afford it. I also think you will quickly discover that neighborhood schools are overrated in DC as a source of friendship-- people are super transient anyway and the lottery means classmates might not even live nearby plus you would be surprised by how easy it is to maintain a neighborhood friendship while kids attend different schools.[/quote]

OP here and I know this sounds crazy but the truth is we're just happy where we are, and we'd rather not. I KNOW that one day I might regret this but it's really hard to make this huge change to our finances, uproot our kids, and add whatever commute to our daily lives, because we're trying to avoid some theoretical future pain. Our lives feel so easy and, to be honest, perfect right now. Of course the threat of ~3rd/4th grade is looming over our heads, but it still makes it hard to pull the parachute right now. I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just explaining where we're at. We keep saying "one more year" and that has turned into 3 years. And maybe one more, who is to say. You could also argue that we should just sell our house and move to upper NW and probably we should, but the god honest answer is we don't want to. We like it where we are and, most of all, we like the financial flexibility that our current lifestyle gives us. It's probably immature of us but that's what it is. [/quote]

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