Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have two kids in a NYC private and make about $1.5m HHI combined with a nw of $8m. While we can afford it I maintain that it’s not a great value. The kids would be 100% fine in our local halfway decent public.

Appreciate you're admitting this!

The great value comes from the connections your children are going to have.

I'm from nyc as well...

Being surrounded by kids of a high SES and high involved and invested parents is absolutely beneficial.

However our main driver was the class sizes. My kids went from chaotic inclusion classes of 25-29 kids to differentiated classrooms with a maximum of 12 kids to 1 teacher. This year my sons Spanish class has 7 kids. The amount of attention my kids get and how much feedback they get on their work is incredible. It's impossible to slip through the cracks.

Our small private school sends more kids to Ivy league schools each year than the entire public school system we are mapped to. It also shows in our average SAT scores which are way higher than our local GS8 rated public even if you control for and pull out the FARMS and ELA kids.

Private school kids are no smarter, but the individualized learning and focused classes go a long way.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have two kids in a NYC private and make about $1.5m HHI combined with a nw of $8m. While we can afford it I maintain that it’s not a great value. The kids would be 100% fine in our local halfway decent public.

Appreciate you're admitting this!

The great value comes from the connections your children are going to have.

I'm from nyc as well...

It depends on what they want to do. For finance yes they will have connections. If they want to become a dentist in Chicago the connections likely won't matter. I.m a federal lobbyist no one I interact with went to an NYC private so I doubt the connections would help with that either.

Anonymous wrote:We have two kids in a NYC private and make about $1.5m HHI combined with a nw of $8m. While we can afford it I maintain that it’s not a great value. The kids would be 100% fine in our local halfway decent public.

Appreciate you're admitting this!

The great value comes from the connections your children are going to have.

I'm from nyc as well...

Anonymous wrote:Send them in middle or high school like we did and save some years of tuition payments like we did. We have twins that started private in 6th grade. $500 k HHI and pay $70 tuition for them.

Yes, we started in middle. Our "grrst: public schools only start to shit the bed in middle in high. Plus the small class sizes go a long way
Out private has a class all through middle school dedicated exclusively to forming good study and organization skills. I have one kid headed to Pinceton next year. Doubtful we'd have had the same result had we stayed with our public.

Send them in middle or high school like we did and save some years of tuition payments like we did. We have twins that started private in 6th grade. $500 k HHI and pay $70 tuition for them.

Anonymous wrote:We make $800k/year and I don’t feel like we can send our 2 kids to private. We just started making this much, we have no family money, and we won’t inherit anything. Although $800k is a lot, we have to think about kids’ college and our retirement. Spending money on private schools just does not seem like a financially sound move. FWIW, our kids are at a private pre-K now, and we are definitely on the lower end of the income distribution (by quite a bit).

You don’t live in dc I guess

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We make 900-1.2m.

We make more and send our kids to public

Congrats??? We make more and send out kids to private. It’s astounding the difference

There’s no way you make more than me

HHI $425K
We pay $50K for one high school kid
Grandparents pay $50K for the second high school kid.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our HHI is $200k with one kid in private. We’ve had him there for 10 years, and our HHI was $150k when he started. Does it constrain us? Well yeah - if we weren’t paying $40k for tuition we would use it for a nicer house or nicer vacations. There is always a trade off, unless you are very wealthy. But we value the school more than we value a nice house or vacation, so that is how we spend our money. There are plenty of other people at our school whose incomes are near ours - two income families with a teacher and a pediatrician, or a nurse and a fed, etc. My kid knows we have more money than 99% of the world and 90% of the US, even if we do have less money than many of his classmates. It’s never been an issue.

Our HHI is 250k, but otherwise +1. Makes me think our children are at the same school. We feel very comfortable both with our finances and in the school community.

+1, except our HHI is recently up to $280k. One kid in $40k private, and we are still contributing to retirement and college, but our house is small and no fancy luxuries.

OP, I think you can afford at least two kids in private.

Anonymous wrote:Our HHI is $200k with one kid in private. We’ve had him there for 10 years, and our HHI was $150k when he started. Does it constrain us? Well yeah - if we weren’t paying $40k for tuition we would use it for a nicer house or nicer vacations. There is always a trade off, unless you are very wealthy. But we value the school more than we value a nice house or vacation, so that is how we spend our money. There are plenty of other people at our school whose incomes are near ours - two income families with a teacher and a pediatrician, or a nurse and a fed, etc. My kid knows we have more money than 99% of the world and 90% of the US, even if we do have less money than many of his classmates. It’s never been an issue.

Hey, are you me? Same in every respect except that we made 100K when we started, and our school is 30

We live very modestly, and our kid’s school is our big extravagance. Worth every penny.

We make $800k/year and I don’t feel like we can send our 2 kids to private. We just started making this much, we have no family money, and we won’t inherit anything. Although $800k is a lot, we have to think about kids’ college and our retirement. Spending money on private schools just does not seem like a financially sound move. FWIW, our kids are at a private pre-K now, and we are definitely on the lower end of the income distribution (by quite a bit).

I have been struggling with the same thing OP. DH and I make $500K salary plus I get a bonus of about $100K but I do worry about us getting laid off in our 50s and not having ample savings (even though we have $2M saved for retirement and are now saving about another $100K/year for retirement plus $50K in non-retirement savings). If we had super secure incomes (ie if we were doctors) I think I'd be more comfortable with private school, but we aren't so I think we will stick with public. our total income wasn't always anywhere near as high as it is now -- that impacts our financial picture too. Good luck with your decision.

Our two children go to parochial schools. HHI is 170K and we spend 21K on tuition. I suspect there are many families like ours, as well.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We make 900-1.2m.

We make more and send our kids to public

Congrats??? We make more and send out kids to private. It’s astounding the difference

2 in private one in college. $900k HHI.