If your kids go to private school how much do you earn?

A clinical excellence award is worth 3k per annum before tax, so that’s definitely not ‘greatly’ increasing income!

It’ll be the private work, which is akin to having second job.

Take home pay about £200k. School fees about 12-14k per annum with extras - lunch and Bus. We live abroad and moved when DS was 11 so couldn't fit into the local Secondary school due to the language barrier. His school teaches the British GCSE and Bacalaurette system. It's a brilliant school and he's incredibly happy there

Prep school fees in London are about £23k. We manage fine but the DC are talking about boarding school where fees are upward of £45k per year and we will still manage fine but it's the difference between 4 and 5 hols a year and a new car every 5 years than every 3. It's what many would deem a first world problem. If we earnt £120k between us, I wouldn't feel comfortable with London school fees because I wouldn't be prepared to sacrifice nice holidays and general "nice lifeness", especially when we have some of the top state schools in the country close by.

They are incredibly low fees for a private school @TimeDrainer I've not read all your posts but assume this is a prep school?

I'm a former teacher in a private school and the fees there now (a minor public school- not Harrow or Eton) are more than £12K a term.

When my DCs were 11+ age, we could have afforded to send one to an indy school- day pupil, around £25Kpa but not both. Joint income of around £120K.

Earn in excess of £300k between us and plenty of room for salary increases to come. That said, we stopped at 2 DC as felt that 3 or more would be a stretch financially, along with a chunky mortgage and other high outgoings. It's a trade off.

Our household income from earnings is about 400k (350/60). We've done a combination of state and private, depending on what is right for each child at the time.

However, we are also in a position to have other sources of income (investments) that fees could come from if our income went down. I would not be happy relying on earned income for school fees. I think that this is quite a common position to be in, and parents in less remunerative jobs often have another source of school fees (often the bank of granny and grandpa I suspect.)

I would be surprised, for example, if most of the doctors at your child's school are paying school fees from NHS wages. Remember doctors are often from wealthier families and might well have parents paying the fees, rental income etc. Certainly our two close 'two doctor' family friends, both have at least one partner from a wealthy family and considerable additional income from investments and/or property. Which is why they can afford to be doctors and have a great quality of life/ private school/lovely house in London.

Our base income is £370k. It fluctuates depending on bonuses, when/if I work and from investments. We can and will afford to send all 4 DDs to PS from 4-18, and we have a savings pot to cover an amount of fees in emergencies/if circumstances change. We could manage on less, but obviously don't need to. The main thing to focus on is income stability.

2 DDs in nursery, 1 in school and 1 at home currently, so by the time our youngest reaches school age we'll be earning more and fees may have changed.

Yes I agree with @Franxx68 . My preference would be to be able to access good state education and have good SEN provision for DS1 and to have money freed up for other things. I do get very envious of people who have really good holidays etc; go out alot. There is not alot of give in our budget at all. If I had a real choice (which currently I do not feel as if we do due to DS1's needs and the fact the school deal with him so brilliantly) then my choices would be different. I do feel like we are going without and certainly do feel like there are consequences to choosing a private school.

DH is one of 3 and his parents were really very well off. Three kids at a famous public school. But nothing outside that- no hobbies; no holidays nothing at all. He speaks of how envious they were of the neighbours' children who were at the local schools and had holidays and ponies and all that. He now says he sees the value in what his parents were doing for him and his siblings. I just hope we can have a happy medium somewhere. (This year I am hoping we might get a family holiday to the Channel Islands for example).

I'm not saying I need a violin played- but it is true that for alot of people choosing private means prioritising some things over others. I don't allow myself to think of what the fees cost in detail. It depresses me.

Very interesting. I'd say we live very comfortable with a net monthly take home pay of about £6.5k with around a £1k mortgage and I'd say we could afford it, but we wouldn't be prepared to go without other things to 'afford it' such as a couple of nice holidays a year, and trips/meals out etc.

My friend & her DH have a combined yearly income of about £90k gross with two kids in primary private school and they can't afford to do anything else! That's no way to live in my opinion but each to their own. It depends what the rest of your lifestyle is like as to whether you 'choose' to afford it I think...

We had a fee freeze over the covid period and they rose 5% this year. The Governors have committed to no more than 5% a year. The issue is if fees had the 20% VAT added all at once (without a corresponding rise in salaries)plus the expected annual rise on top of that. Every rise does indeed make us re-assess our finances. Neither child does any extra curriculars at all. Thank heavens we do not have a high mortgage otherwise we simply could not do it.

My DH is a consultant anaesthetic and our DC are at private school. He has a clinical excellence award which greatly increases his income, and also does private work 1 day a week.

Yes @Circe7 i guess you are right. On a take home of c£10k net we are currently paying £2.5k to our nanny, £1.5k on bills inc food and clothes, £2.5k on our mortgage and £2.5k on savings so c£1k left over which goes on holidays and presents etc. However we are about to double our mortgage so the savings will go.

In theory we could choose not to extend our house but we have outgrown it now. In future we won’t have the nanny expenses but we have 2 kids so couldn’t afford the £12k/term on the above income. And presumably fees will be even higher by the time we reach that point.

I think when some people say they can’t afford it they just mean they can’t afford it and have the lifestyle they want (which is fine). A lot of people afford £2k per month of nursery fees on much lower incomes. I pay this in childcare on a salary of £80k. But I would think at £120k gross it’s probably affordable but might mean compromise elsewhere.

It probably depends what your options for raising or earning more money are too. E.g I could work 5 days for £100k if I wanted which would almost pay a set of school fees.

Combined income here of £250k and don’t expect to be able to afford to send 2 kids to private school in London unless we get a significant pay rise. I think I’d feel comfortable around the £300k mark.

We have a massive mortgage on a not especially nice house in a not especially nice area because neither of us have ever had anh help from family.

Combined income of 80000ish. Two at private primary - we sent DS1 there because the state school he originally went to didn't cope well with his SEN, and then felt we couldn't not do the same for DS2. It pretty much uses my entire salary, so we live on DH's; mortgage is 1300 a month and we just about manage financially but things are very tight. No savings, no spare money for treats. DS2 went back after Easter and came home full of suggestions for future holiday destinations - maybe we could go the Maldives like so-and-so, or someone else had 'quite liked' their two weeks at Disneyworld but thought the hotel pool was a bit boring so 'when we go we should stay somewhere else'. At some point I'm going to have to break it to him that our summer holiday this year is going to be camping in a friend's garden 😂. I know we're very fortunate to be able to afford it all, and my salary goes up a bit each year which helps, but tbh I'm not sure it's the best decision we've ever made.

@TiredOfCleaning

As fees are rising quite fast year on year would you not be anyway?

Our base joint income is 260k, usually rising to 320-350 per year with bonuses. We have one DD in private and two DSC in private high school.
DSC mum also contributes to school fees.
Greater London and we live in a modest 3 bed flat but travel lots.
For our DD school we are by far one of the lowest earners. Mostly bankers and lots of family money. Celebrities etc.
Its fine, but DD did mention that we everyone travels first class of by private plane…

DSC are in school until 5:30 most days and then do hours of homework every night and around 4 hours per day on the weekend. It’s intense.

Household income is £108,000. School fees are £19 k. Sent first DC there because he has significant learning issues (requires both a reader and a scribe for exams etc. ADHD and ASD) and the SEN provision was fantastic. Second DC because seemed unfair to just send one. Lucky to have a small mortgage. We are not rolling in money after this and yes have made very deliberate sacrifices. Not alot of disposable income left after that tbh. If the proposed 20% increase on fees comes in we are screwed.

40% of the parents in one of my DC class of 20 are doctors : all consultants (or private Harley st GPs). All doing a bit of private work on the side. The one doctor family I know well who don’t do private work (specialties where no private market in the UK) and have 4 DC private school fees to pay have help from the grandparents : retired doctors with healthy NHS pensions!

im wondering who these doctors are that are affording all this! Because the numbers ( take home pay) don’t stack up at all and most doctors I know have kids in state schools, cannot afford private schools.

It depends what they're doing. Many consultants also see private patients and potential income varies hugely amongst medical fields (dermatology, dentistry and plastic surgery tend to be the highest).

DH is a private doctor with his own clinic that has a turnover of about 1.2 - 1.5M a year. Deducting all the costs it leaves about 300K gross income from him and 50K from me, so about 350K household.

We started DS at a state school with a good reputation but things didn't go well and we decided to switch to private. It was frustrating as we really wanted public to work out but there were so many issues cropping up that we felt it would be pointless to persevere when private was an affordable option.

I’m not arguing with you about consultants pay. Most of the parents at our school are doctors. If you’re a two consultant family with extras and private work and a fantastic pension you are doing more than alright in this neck of the woods.

Re the op who says about grandparent contribution why should they and if they have multiple grandchildren how is that even feasible for most? Certainly my parents who never earned more than £40k per annum in their lives and are now retired are not able to pay school fees.

This is an interesting thread. Our DC is still nursery age but we pay £1,200 a month for nursery. This time next year we’ll have 2 in nursery and that bill will be closer to £2,000.

Joint household income of around 70k. Though we’re late 20s so I expect it to keep rising for a good while.

Being able to manage the nursery fees and still have money left to save makes me think that we could afford one at private. The primary’s in our area are good but grammars for secondary. My hope is that atleast one of them gets into grammar and we could probably afford private for the other one.

dh earns about £250,000k.
I earn almost nothing (living wage rate/hour)

I would normally expect grandparents to want to contribute so it is not just based on income. My mum offered to pay for private school for any kids I had but I turned her down since we can make do for now.