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.

Lemoning, we are joint income of circa £135k with mortgage of 2k a month so only about 1k less than you a month after that. We have 2dcs in private as well as an after school nanny. It is tough and we budget very carefully. We don't really have any luxuries and go camping every year to France for our main holiday. Wouldn't change it at all though, we have a fab time camping and I don't really care about clothes or gadgets that much (my only splurge is my hair cuts!). We love their school.

We couldn't go for any more children based on finances and I am ok with that. My oldest has dyslexia and her school has bee fantastic and picked it up early and helping her now. I feel that with bigger classes that would have been missed until she was even further behind; so paying for primary has paid off already in my view.

Slightly worrying about the future and how we keep going. But for us it was either this school or move out so we will keep going as long as we can. Also we have very good state secondaries around here. Planning on a music scholarship for both of them. Just have to get them playing something first!,

Anyway, I digress. I think it would be tight but perhaps doable on the basis that you will have paid off your mortgage in 4 years. We will be paying off ours for quite a few years yet! Am amazed at those how say private not doable for 2 dc on 200k. Yes it is if you're willing to make sacrifices.

Meant to say that we are in London.

On the selective thing it is competitive, and has to be as so oversubscribed.

International schools with high turn over do tend to be easier, my friends travel to one in SW as they don't test in the same way.

Are you intending on helping them with weddings/houses/gap years as well? The deposit thing especially is something you need to consider. Depending on how generous you'd intend to be, that's another 30-40k per child you'd have to "find".

I apologize for my earlier insensitive comment about deprivation. I guess I don't have much knowledge and fist hand experience about it and should not have written what I have.

I live in an ex-council house which we bought for 80K 15 years ago with ex's salary of 25K, so hardly expensive area and mortgage now is very low. Not everyone who sends their kids to private schools/grammar is very rich. They both walk to their schools & those schools are nearest for us.

We also always had very cheap holidays, went without buying new clothes for years (ebay&charity shops are always good source) etc.
It always was about choice where money goes. In early/mid 2000 many people were moving to bigger houses. We decided it was too risky to rely on good income and as someone above mentioned, assuming dips in economy every 4-5 years is very wise. We both had redundancies since 2005. My ex 2 I had 3.

Obviously private lessons for music are luxuries. But I chosen work/commute/weekend on call combination (setting off 5 am home by 5 pm) which pays for that. It is an expense which can be reduced at any time if I had no spare money. Flaming me for having a choice would really be very funny considering everyone wants a choice of education for their kids.

Lemoning: sorry I didn't reply sooner, I had gone to bed! For the record

It is worth it to us for several reasons:

my daughter is very bright (sorry - I know everyone thinks their children are bright, but she is. Not my opinion - the opinion of every teacher who has ever taught her) and she has been extended far more in private school than she was in state school. This is helped by the fact that the school are not straightjacketed by the National Curriculum and tests.

My youngest son has ADHD type difficulties - he struggled badly in a state class of 31 children, but his current class have 16 children and a LOT of structure, and he is thriving.

There is a far greater selection of extra curricula activities on offer than at State school, which I think is extremely important. The school they go to also spends a lot of time "performing" - the children are involved in at least two drama shows a year, a well as dancing and music etc. I think this helps their confidence so much. They also do a lot of "just for the school" performing - for example children are offered the chance to play the piano etc in assembly. They just really celebrate all sorts of achievement.

Their particular school has a much more diverse cohort than the local -all white/pretty much all born in the village/all Protestant church going- school. For me this is important as it broadens horizons, and helps children to be aware that there is a big world out there full of people who do things different ways, and who move around the world rather than living and dying in the same village...

Also the slightly extended school day is useful to me as it means I can often do pick ups and drop offs without needing to arrange additional childcare.

In the end though, the most important thing I think has been the small class sizes - it really means that the teacher gets more of a chance to interact with each child meaningfully, and without being pulled away by 29 other children. Whatever the child's needs (and even if their needs are decidedly "ordinary") this has to be a good thing.

antimatter I apologise for being arsey. And for being wrong. Grennie is quite right about Grammar schools. They were set up for bright working class children.

But even in the early eighties there was a real mix. My parents were both working (one paying tax at the higher rate at that point) but didn't prioritise spending on education so it was poverty of aspiration I had to contend with.

My friend was extremely poor, lived in a tower block, shoes falling apart, cold, hungry. My other mate's parents could easily had afforded private but wanted to save so she had been coached for years and was miserable because she couldn't keep up.

Anyway, I will go back to reading. This thread is quite fascinating.

Wow!

DP and I both work our tits off for a combined income of £25K

Different planet.

Our income similar with three kids just finished state school,mortgage paid off next year as overpaid. With pension contributions taken into account and tax, there's no way we could have afforded private for three let alone four.

We had a fabulous state primary in catchment and ours went there to begin with. We started putting money aside during this time to ensure that we were well cushioned in the event of misfortune. We did not move DS until we knew we had a sufficient nest egg to see him through and wouldn't have taken that risk. Also with only two DC we knew that I could return to work if necessary.

It's hard to compare because we are older and our eldest has left school.

If you are planning on educating four and doing so out of salary only I would say that with your current earnings and assets you would be pushing it to expect to see them all through from pre-prep to post grad to be honest.

I also think that the pressures on legal careerists/City are such that long commutes together with the long hours are not really sustainable over the long term. I think that can be hard to appreciate together with the fact that even a modest house in London (SW) is at the million mark now. It is difficult to appreciate the London microcosm and poor secondary provision here if you are not part of it.

Income here around £40,000 (single) and have 2 dc at Indy preps - 60% bursary for one and 40% for the other - so costs about £12,000 per year. It is tough but in my opinion it's worth it!

Wowzer. Am gobsmacked at just how much some people pay for education which is freely available and often brilliant.
(not always, but surely if you're highly paid you can move to cachment for good schools or grammar area?)

How are you going to cover the costs when they get to 8, and then 13, and 16 though busylizzie76. At 6th form we were paying £18k fees and even with a 60% and 40% bursary you would have to find £18k plus expenses per annum. That is pretty steep out of £40,000 per annum.

11k a term is quite fucking staggering!!

I agree about the resounding shock of redundancy and working out what happens then. We started saving when the DCs were small for their university fees and thought that 'their' savings would if push came to shove do for their school fees.

I also agree that law is not the career that it once was - I spend half my life trying to dissuade DD from becoming a lawyer.

But sometimes the education isn't freely available and brilliant usuallyright. In the part of London where we live there are some selective grammars, notably Tiffin, which probably takes the top 0.5% and is geared towards the sciences rather than the liberal arts so if you child isn't maths/science orientated it is possibly not the right choice. Further, many of the comps within five miles of us don't offer a decent mfl provision, don't offer a classical language and some are unclear about their provision of three separate sciences.

Also it isn't always possible to move far away to better catchments, for us that would have been at least 30 miles which would mean me leaving my job and DH having a lengthy journey on top of very long hours, uprooting other dc from schools where they might be happy. The other thing is stamp duty and I would say if you have two children the cost of moving within the M25 is likely to be exceptionally expensive and you have to balance that against the overall cost of paying for education and upheaval for the rest of the family.

Buying a house for about £700,000 is likely to result in costs of about £60,000 and you have to balance that against the cost of the fees and the upheaval of moving. That might sound a lot but in the context of withi the M25 that really only buys a nice house and in the parts of Surrey/Kent that we would look at if moving out a bit and into good catchments it doesn't buy anything particularly special or grand. Although of course there is the argument that a London house sold for say £1.25 million would buy a better house in say Ewell/Epsom which is still commutable to some of the best London day schools and frees up £350,000-£400,000 to spend on the fees.

Wuldric my DH spends hours trying to persuade DS it would be right career for him but DS will have none of it.

I don't disclose my income and I am self employed so it fluctuates but it has been enough to pay 5 sets of school fees, currently two sets as the olders have left and also to fund them so the older ones could graduate debt free. It was hard at times. The oldest, then of three, first went to a fee paying nursery school at 3 and the full time fee paying school at 5. I was 25 and then 27 when paying those fees and for full time childcare for the others. Not surprisingly most of the uniform was from the second hand shop at the school which did the children no harm at all.

Well worth the money and I had gone to a private school from age 4 too so it seemed the obvious thing to do and we got them into top 5 - 20 schools so we weren't paying for the worst private schools but top day ones so that seems worth it. Interestingly all the older one's friends from her class that I know of are now in jobs earning £50k - £100k at under age 30 so I am pretty sure it has worked. obviously those girls would all have been very clever had they got into a state grammar or comp but I am not sure they would have done quite so well in terms of careers and earnings but who know? Lots of children do well in state schools. It is up to women and men to pick careers which enable them to pay fees or not as their own preferences go and their own political views. All 9 of the cousins are in or were in private schools from age 4 so it looks like the next generation will be the same.

I am very happy with our choices. At times it has been hard to afford fees but not really difficult in the way some people face but is in part due to my research into earnings and careers as a teenager which of course is something even easier for teenage girls to do today unless they are too busy doing their nails and chasing boys to make wise career decisions. One hopes state schools do not direct them to low paid work these days either.

yes elizabeth, because as we all know, the true value of education is the ability to bring in between 50-100k under the age of 30? Nothing about being a well rounded, well adjusted human being..

The big difference I think between state and independent is expectation. I went to grammar school (70s) and was then sent to the local indy for 6th form. Bright girls at the grammar were pushed into nursing, teaching, working for banks, and interestingly the forces - it was very pedestrian and not very inspiring. At the indy children who were by no means as bright were pushed towards careers such as Chartered Surveying and Land Management, Marketing, Advertising, etc., things I never heard discussed at my grammar. Some of the people who went down the Surveying route are now partners in top London firms. The grammar school children were more than capable of doing that but nobody advised them of the possibility.

I wonder why you cannot disclose your income when you are self employed how about quoting an average income.

Because nobody has to applefallingfromatree

If , you are already 40 and yet to have a fourth child, I would be concerned that In order to do what you propose, your dh will still have to be in high paying employment at 60. This is a bit risky given his profession and the uncertainty around employment we all face.

If private education and contributing significantly to their costs at university (and this looks likely to get more expensive) is important then I would stick with three children. It is hard to compute just how expensive it is to bring up teenagers!