To ask your household income with 3-4 DC in private school?

[Lemoning]

And are you comfortably living, affording savings and holidays and not worrying about money? Pre tax income, and obviously including the school fees in your outgoings, ie: they're not paid by GP or similar.

I sometimes wonder if we're going to regret starting down the private school road because of money worries later on. Our income pre tax is about £200k.

Mrs Tara weighs in without doing the sums or recognising that the OP lives in London ...

Enlighten me ... Her Majesty Customs then....

We are looking at 12k for pre prep, 16 for prep, and 20k for secondary. I allowed 15-20k a year per child from 16-23.

And yes currently 10k a month after tax. Pension taken care of and mortgage with 5 more years.

Then hammer down that mortgage in the primary school years and plan for private secondary.

I think we will struggle :(

I agree, no need for private primary.

This thread makes interesting and/or scary reading for me. We have two children in private preps at the moment, admittedly one on a big choir scholarship, and a family income substantially under £100k albeit plenty high enough to put us out of means tested bursaries at many places. SE but not in London and I do get the impression that London schools are a different story to everywhere else. Also housing costs are lower I guess.

We are dipping into savings intermittently at present but these investments have been holding their own so far. I am hoping to increase my own earnings gradually over the next few years. Expecting both children to have scholarship potential at senior schools but not sure how much they will actually get from those.

I don't work and DH's salary is considerably less than yours. We have 3 dc's, 2 in private school at the moment. We are missing out on the little luxuries in life such as hairdressers and holidays because I want the very best education for my dc's.

So far the school has been perfect and they are doing very, very well. I'd rather start them off in a school with very high academic standards than try and get them to fit in through tutoring etc later on.

And we're near the end now; we started off on a lot less than half that income. But that mortgage! OP, when will you have paid it off? You'll have a lot more income then.
Also holidays- how much do you spend there? I'm assuming they're young enough to be flying cheaper, sharing rooms. You may well find that as they grow older you're 'reduced' to camping/ ferry to France anyway. 2 weeks mark Warner with teens is 10k+

Any hope I was clinging onto for scholarships has gone now I learn that scholarships are also means tested. Pointless thinking about it in monetary terms then.

If you can get the high academic standards for free though, that makes much more sense.

Currently 2 or 3 holidays is 12k. I can see that rising when we can't fit cots in our bedroom.

It makes a HUGE difference that the mortgage is paid off in 5 years. It suddenly looks just about possible. I am assuming that you are in your early thirties. The school and university fees for four are around 6k a month. So for the next 23 years (there is some gradation either side) you are looking at living on 4k a month. You won't be living on champagne and roses, you won't have nice cars or flash holidays, the DCs can forget about ski-trips and random trips to Malawi to exhibit a social conscience, but you can just about afford it.

Yes, we now do 1 big holiday per year and stay home for a week here and there during school holidays.

I am tight though, it has to be said.

So in 5 years time you'll have 48k pa extra after tax.
It's very doable.
Redo the sums allowing 5k from 18 and it's even more doable. Don't even think of paying their college fees.

No we're both 40!

So how do they afford unique?! For us it was state funded and I had a part time job. But parents still housed me and helped out when needed.

Uni not unique ..

Hang on matey. Don't give up on the scholarship idea. DS has an academic scholarship which is relatively meaningless (oh the joy of the saving of £200 a term!) but he also is a choral scholar and this is much much better. Think around £4k. Makes a difference :)

Same way we did I assume.

Working 3 jobs, living on booze, sharing a flat, and generally being pretty broke.

FWIW OP, I managed to get one of them there fancy Oxbridge degrees on a bog-standard comprehensive school educashun.

My DH is earning the same money as your DH without an Oxbridge degree.

These things are indeed possible. The stats mean nothing.

Scholarships aren't bursaries- 2 of mine have had an admittedly 'not enormous but not to be sneezed at' quarter off.

They're still going to be tapping us up though Morloth. I think I'd be mad to think we won't be funding them through further ed.

Well that was easy for us as our parents didn't have any money.

Just tell them that you are broke because of all the school fees, the little ingrates.