Our HHI is around $250k, and we plan to send 2 to private. We have a mortgage of around $3k/mo but few other big expenses (no car payments, minimal school loans, etc.). It feels doable to me -- we've run the numbers, and it shouldn't require tons of sacrifice. We'll just save a lot less.

We spend 10% of our pretax income on private school, another 10% for retirement, 28% on housing, another 4% on other debt. About 20% goes to taxes. Out of the remaining funds, there's not usually enough left for more than a camping vacation once a year.

Two kids in private.

HHI of $150, one child in private. I don't think we could swing two, but we might qualify for a bit of aid if we had another. We don't feel "poor" at our school at all - there are lots of other people who do the kinds of jobs we do, and like to do the kinds of things we do, and no one (even folks who have tons more money than we do) has ever, ever made us feel "poor." Yes, my son claims he is THE ONLY child in the entire school without an iphone, but since that is demonstrably false I don't sweat it.

Until last year we had 3 in private on an HHI of 160k. One in college and the remaining 2 in public now, because we really couldn't make it work financially : (

About $650K, 3 kids in private.

About $450k. Three in private. Doable but we're not otherwise lavish.

3 kids, HHI of between 500k to 900k depending on the year. College will be paid for by the grandparents. That helps with the peace of mind because we don't worry about saving for college, just retirement.

I'm hoping to see some HHI of those of you who have 3 kids (anyone with even more than that???) in private. We can do two on a tight budget, but still not stress too much about our finances. Wondering if we can do a third (who doesn't exist yet!)

maybe you can qualify for aid?

We only have 1 child, 200K pre tax. We live comfortably enough. Definitely couldn't swing it if we had 2.

This thread is blowing my mind. I grew up in DC and my parents sent me to NCS and my brother to another private. At the time (90's) NCS was 14k a year. Now it's 40+ Have salaries really kept up with that? I'm not sure my husband and I can do the same for our kids. We are about 140k.

Anonymous wrote:Wide Range of incomes--- depends on what your other big expenses are. If you have the 5K per month mortgage, versus rent for 2K a month; if you take nice vacations, versus not; lease new cars versus not; how often and where you eat out; how much you put aside in 401ks, and so on.

Other than that, do a search on "HHI" in this forum and you will get to see what this range is.

This poster is right, except she forgot how many kids you have and how much outside of your 401ks you put away for (name your fund - college, retirement, rainy day, wedding, etc.), too. Plus it's post-tax dollars, so depending on your income you may need to make twice the tuition cost just to be able to pay it after the tax bite.

We have too many big expenses (working on that - hello, financial planner!). As a result, with an HHI of about $800K, we are comfortable with two kids but couldn't do four. Luckily, we have only two. YMMV.

About 1m it's not a stretch for us but we still do question the value prop on occasion

Impossible to judge this way. We make under 200k but have no mortgage. We don't pay it now but could afford it in theory (pay $2k/mo for daycare and with another child that'd be nearly as much as private - but it's only for a few years). Of course, at our HHI with mortgage, no way.

Anonymous wrote:This is interesting. We make $140K and are considering private, but are a little concerned that we will be the "poor" people there. FWIW we don't consider ourselves poor and are pretty happy with our lot in life, but we don't want out boys to feel like they are the poor kids all the time.

Hi -- I'm the 160k mom. I'm sure it depends on which school you are looking to attend, but ours is pretty down-to-earth and the wealth disparity is really not uncomfortable, at least with young children.

This is interesting to me as well. We have only one in private full-day preschool at $28k. Our HHI is $250k (pre tax), but we have what appears to be low expenses (mortgage is $2300/month, no car payments, no student loans, fully fund 401ks, no extravagent vacations, fantastic health insurance for which we pay no premiums). I feel financially very comfortable-- if we only had one, we could certainly keep up an annual $30k tuition payment. But not sure we could swing it with two.