How much do you earn??

[Limpetsmum]

I know this sounds very rude but I just dont get how people afford private education.
My husband and I have good jobs and probably earn a take home wage of £6000/month between us ie after tax, student loans, pension etc. And that's with doing extra Hours to top up income. We both work full time and are exhausted!
Childcare comes to £2000/month. Mortgage current £1000 (but likly to go up when we move soon). Bills guessing around £600. We have no savings but have investments in property.
I would love to privately educate our kids and our combined wage will probably go up by about £1000/month in a years time - but I struggle to see how we would afford private education. I don't think we can for 3 kids.
But having said that, on paper we earn good money and I just don't get how others afford private education.
Those who privately educate - do you earn a lot more than us - or have you come into money/inheritance to fund education?
Sorry to sound so rude by asking the question but I presume as it's anonymous I might get some replies! Maybe we're just really bad at managing finances....

We don't have a mortgage. We only have 2 (although I'm surprising myself with thoughts of a third) and didn't have them until we were mid to late 30s so we both have houses (one lived in mortgage free the other with tenants). We run 2 businessess between us and for the last 8-10 years have drawn v little, partly with the intention of building them up to comfortably afford school fees.

DH takes home £6.5k after tax. We have two children. We decided against private for primary as on our doorstep is an outstanding primary, however another consideration was that, despite the healthy take home pay, the fees would have had a major impact on our life. Around here it would be £4500 a term from 7 years upwards. That's £9k a term. Excluding all the extra costs.

We are thinking private secondary if grammar not successful.

Why are you so keen to educate your children privately? Are the local state schools not very good, or the local private schools absolutely phenomenal? I guess you'll have to face it - you'll just never be rich enough both to afford private school fees and not be exhausted (in which case, you would probably find your life more "enriched" if you worked less, earned less, and saw more of those enriching children of yours!!!).

I know what you mean Limpet, our household income is £133k gross...and we will find it tight to send one DC privately.
We will defiantly be the 'poor relations' at school, PTA ball tickets are £70 each plus raffle tickets, drinks etc.
I don't know if other parents on a similar income would stretch themselves this much?

Definitely and defiantly! Typo

Lifeisbetter are you sure you will be the poor relative? I would be suprised if you were.

I don't know yoyo - it's not really something you can ask in real life.

I've just re-read thread and seen your post re income; you manage...do you find it a problem being on a budget, like us, when other parents don't have such constraints?

It is hard. We are on probably half your gross income. We have public sector pension schemes so do not worry about that side of things. We have not been on holiday abroad for years. It feels worthwhile when we see how happy DS is. There are some tough times (family have lent us fees in the past-we have paid them back). There are certainly other families that do not go abroad that much etc. and socially we spend more time with them (this is probably more to do with silmilar professions though than money). DS is aware that he is not as rich (he said it the other day, very matter of factly). We have been very happy with our decision (DH would rather change the house than change DS schooling).

We have one DC age 9 at private school. It's about £12,000 a year (including lunches, trips, uniform etc). DH is self-employed and usually takes home between £8-10,000/month. We've recently cleared our mortgage, but we've never upgraded to a bigger home (to be honest we live in a very expensive area and can't really afford to). We are now paying the majority of our income into pensions, ISA's etc to make sure we have some money in the future. DH might be earning good money now, but is unlikely to do current job past age 55 (6 years time). Then I don't know quite what will happen - hopefully our savings will be enough. Most of our (rare) holidays are in the UK, DC have only twice been abroad - though we want to change this as they grow up. We run two cars out of necessity (DH drives to work and I need a car to drive to school). We have a family gym membership. We are not extravagant, but I don't look at prices in the supermarket either. I don't buy expensive clothes - though I have never shopped in H&M, Primark etc. We eat out a lot - but in child friendly places - so never really expensive.

If you think of private education roughly (at primary level - for a normal private school) costing approximately £1,000 per month (of your taxed money), then you are going to need a spare £3,000 per month. That's a lot of money unless the children are well spaced out! It only gets more expensive at secondary level, and I really hope that we can afford to carry on.

We have two DCs at private prep. Monthly income is a bit higher than yours but not much. No savings or family help but we've known for a while that DH's earnings will treble over the next couple of years. For the past few years things have been tight cash flow wise but because we know we'll have more cash in future we've been able to run a big mortgage without worrying so haven't had to make too many lifestyle compromises.

On our current level of income things would get very tight as the kids got older and fees increased. Not impossible but we'd definitely have to forego any luxuries for ourselves.

To be honest I think that is what a lot of families do. The sterotype of private school kids holidaying in the bahamas and alps may have been true when we were kids but not any more. Fees have risen so much that most families have to make sacrifices to pay them.

We are on 90K joint with both of us working PT.
Mortgage paid off.
Exceptionally good schools so no need for private , in fact our experience is that our DC have done better than their peers at private school ouch

* Exceptionally good schools so no need for private , in fact our experience is that our DC have done better than their peers at private schoolouch*

In what way "done better"?

I have a 'better' job than many expensively educated peers, but my peer group is dramatically different and my upbringing perhaps not so varied
I've made my own way but private ed defo prepares you better for the standard grown up uni grad scheme career ladder life

I don't want this thread to be about private versus state. It's more to try and work out whether we 'should' be able to afford private based on our income from others. My husband isn't keen on struggling by to get kids through private as neither of us were privately educated and we've turned out ok! But I don't know if we're being selfish in not putting our kids education first and maybe sacrificing other things in life, if that's what others do.
If it's a case that we don't earn enough to privately educate three, then that's fine, I'll put it behind me. But if it's a case that others struggle on similar/less then I think we may need to review finances.

What do you spend the £3000 a month on after bills, mrotgage and childcare?

I was genuinely curious

We send our DC to private schools and have a very similar income to you. However, we only have two DC - I don't think we could afford private school for three DC (sorry - probably not what you wanted to hear).

I empathise with the guilty feeling that you should be prioritising your children's education over frivolities. We should be able to afford private education on £6.5k take home on one salary and, if I go back to work,we would comfortably afford it. However, it is accepting that the luxury fortnight holiday will probably not be a yearly event, weekends away unlikely, buying things without really thinking about the cost.... will all become a thing of the past. I feel terrible that I can't be a bigger person and just 'suck it up',as my parents did for me. It's hard though. Hence focusing on secondary education. 6 years of fees is considerably more palatable than 12 years!

With three can you negotiate a really good sibling discount, especially if it is all through schooling?

It's 5% discount for the third sibling around here. Pretty woeful really.

Enjoyingmycoffee1981 when we strated looking at schooling we thought of going state primary, private secondary. It seems a good idea when it is so easy to compare differences of levels of academic qualifications obtained at secondary schools and weighing up if there is any benefit. With us earnings didn't rise with school fees!

That is woeful. These things seem to vary so much.

P.S. is it not likely to be 7 years of fees?

Carol decker - I have no idea! We do have probably £1000 on credit card bills/month for life expenses like grocery shop, eating out, petrol. £400 on car loans. £100 gym membership. £400/month saving roughly for annual holidays (we'll go abroad once a year and spend about £5000 for one holiday abroad and a couple of weeks away somewhere in uk).
And then other £1000 gets eaten up by random things like home repairs/car repairs more bills like road tax/ mobile phone bills/ car service/ kids activities.

Maybe we are just rubbish with finances!