Reply to Life is Easy in NW DC on $300k, AMA

Forum Index » Money and Finances

Reply to "Life is Easy in NW DC on $300k, AMA"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It sounds like you've made good choices and have financial peace.

We live near you in a similar house.  Although our HHI is closer to $400,000, we have made the financially problematic decision to send 2 of our 3 kids to private school.  It's made things very tight for us because tuition takes up so much of our income (way more than our mortgage).

I think that, when people say it's hard to live in DC in a HHI of $300,000, they either (a) have at least one child in private school; or (b) bought a nicer house than you or I did.[/quote]

(OP here) Yes, private school tuition would make things tight.  I'm curious, if you don't mind answering, how did you decide to send 2 kids to private and 1 kid to public?  Our kids are really young (3 and 6), so we haven't had to grapple with a lot of that yet.  Though we did consider the schools when we moved to this neighborhood, of course.[/quote]

PP here.  There are lots of people who send one child to private and another to public.  There are lots of reasons for it, since the decision about private school is unique to each child.  (If you check the Private School forum, you'll see this topic discussed with some frequency.)  Sometimes one child is struggling in public and needs a smaller environment.  Sometimes the parents propose switching to private in MS or HS after the child is already happily settled in public and the child asks not to switch.  Sometimes the parents can only afford one tuition at a time.

In our case, our kids are 16, 14, and 8.  So we have the older two in private (which they started in 6th grade).  The younger one is still in elementary, and so he is in our neighborhood public school.  We may or may not move him to private in 6th grade.  The tuition is so much ($4000 per month per child for 10 months of the year) that we are hoping to have him just go all the way through public, which so far he really wants to do.[/quote]

Thanks for the response. (OP here).  The school planning is all just so unfamiliar to me, and the thought of making a wrong step with your kids' education is paralyzing! I grew up in a small town and attended the only middle school/high school in town, which was the public school system that everyone in town went to.  Quaint, I know.  My wife grew up in a large city (not DC) and attended catholic school from kindergarten through 12th grade, so she's more familiar with the idea of choosing your school (and paying for it).  I believe in public schools and I hope to send my kids to our public school all the way through high school (Wilson), but I also want to provide my kids with all the opportunities that I can.  I guess we'll have to take it year by year and just pay attention to how they are doing and keep our eyes open.  But, like I said, the idea that we could choose "wrong" is just unnerving.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics