Reply to Private school is a terrible ROI for middle class people

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We started sending kids to private school before we had any wealth to speak of. No real investments beyond our 401Ks. Sent our oldest to a good public school (MCPS W) through middle, but moved him to private high school in 9th at the cost of about $80K for four years (it's a lot more now). He ended up at a T20 university and has connections from both HS and college that will pay off for a lifetime. Sent our youngest through K-12 private at a total cost of $280K. She's a senior in HS with very good prospects for colleges based on this high school's typical matriculations. So a total of $360K was spent on K-12 education for two kids.

During this time, our wealth still increased significantly due to DH's very successful career. So we took a risk of not having much for retirement, but ended up with about $14M in net worth with both kids fully educated through college.

Sometimes you take risks in life. We are glad we did. Would they have been ok in pubic school? We will never know. But their friendships and connections would have been very different and I suspect my younger one would have been bullied relentlessly. Luckily we avoided that by putting her in an environment that was more controlled and with a culture of kindness. You can't find that in those big public schools.

Imagine if we were too cheap to spring for private and had a crappy outcome. We'd be kicking ourselves.[/quote]

You aren't middle class so your anecdote is not relevant to this thread.

The question is whether private school makes sense for people who will not have 14M in their retirement accounts by the time their youngest is graduating from high school. And the answer is: no.[/quote]

Do you struggle with reading comprehension? We started our kids in private school with no wealth. We were fortunate that DH did well financially in his career. We took a risk and it was well worth it. So it does apply here. And my husband is 70 FWIW.
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