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....

Sansou - I am financially savvy enough to know what our gross salary is and what we take home. I don't need to go into details but on paper we earn £180k between us (not including rental income!) Pension contributions, buying into business and tax, wipe out a lot of that. I've already said that tax man is having more out of us at present but our pay should hopefully go up by about £1000 as thigs get established.
Hence on paper we earn a very decent comfortable wage but I don't think we could comfortably afford private education for three kids.

Thanks everyone else for your helpful replies

Both dh and i were first generation of our families to go private. I had an absolutely amazing education and want the same for my kids. Am open to the idea of state if I feel it would deliver what I received but from looking at primary schoo so far I don't believe it can in our area. My dads theory was that if he gave us a good education no one can ever take it away from you, you can take it anwhere and it'll last a lifetime.

I went to state school and work shoulder-to-shoulder with many people who went private, so don't see it as something worth paying extra for, especially as the education my DCs are getting at state primary is far superior to my own experience at the same age. And that's just at a 'Good' primary, not an 'Outstanding' one.

I work part-time and would have to go full-time to afford to send both DCs private. I could do that, but I think all of our lives would be worse for it.

We've decided to put any 'spare' money into property to give our DCs a leg up on the ladder when they reach adulthood, and to give them interesting holidays and other enrichment activities. I certainly don't see that as 'selfish' - I see it as doing them a good service - showing them by example that you can have a good life without driving yourself into the ground with stress.

If you send your children private they may well feel they are letting their own children down if they can't afford to do the same, leading to life changing decisions, like having only 1 child instead of 3. Send them state if you care about prolonging your family line for generations to come!

I've paid private school fees now for a continuous period of 27 years.
So that obviously covers a lot of different stages of my life.

For us the cost of full time childcare for 3 children under 5 was the same as 3 sets of school fees ergo if you work when the children are under 5 and have 3x nursery places or a daily nanny the cost of that will be the same as your school fees (although our son did have a discount on fees so not paying a full 3 sets) However at one point I was paying 5 sets (from my earnings) - I work for myself as a lawyer and yes earn more than you and your husband put together but I have worked very hard for 30 years so it has always paid off.

So you pay £2k a month childcare. Day primary school place at say Haberdashers where my oldest went aged 4 is about £12k a year so that's £1k a month x 3 children is £3000 a month. That is a bit more than 3 £10k a year nursery places or the £2k a month you pay for childcare but only £1k more. I don't see why you can't do it - basically you are supplanting the expensive all day childcare for equally expensive school fees and theni n my case when they go to university you can also ensure they have no student loans or debt because that cost is the same as the school fees you were paying anyway.

Ignoring the £180k gross income figure (which btw, excludes your rental income from your investment property), I think that with £6k and potentially £7k+ net monthly income and mortgage of £1k, you can afford it but it doesn't sound as if you want to. Frankly, I would count investments in property and pension contributions as 'savings.' We've made a deliberate decision not to invest in buy to let with our surplus income (rightly or wrongly) and instead have selfishly poured money into our house, Isa's, pensions and other assets.

I think your childcare costs could easily translate to day school fees for 2 DC and I actually do think you can afford it for 3 DC if you don't increase your mortgage. You can definitely reduce your outgoings without a huge amount of hassle - there's quite a lot of flex there. If you wanted to, that is - and it's definitely coming across that you don't. How do you propose to buy another property without any savings then? The obvious answer is that you don't feel that you can afford it because you don't want to compromise your current lifestyle. It's hardly rocket science is it?

Myron - our current lifestyle isn't particularly flush. Our house is less than £300k (hence the 1k mortgage) and yes, I don't want to compromise on what I already think is a fairly humble existence (for our wage). We go on one holiday abroad a year (and if we want to travel further a field or splash out, then we work extra hours at work with a view to paying for holiday or any other lifestyle extras. Spa days/shopping sprees are a non occurrence for us.
But yes, we do have the cash to afford lunch out and if we wanted to stay in a hotel overnight for a friends wedding, we would fork out the cost. But not just splash out on a random weekend away for no reason.
As for moving up the property ladder - I know a lot of mums wouldn't prioritise that, but I would like a nicer house and gain in pay over next year will cover that plus a bit extra. As for further investment property, we would jig about equity in the two properties we have to hopefully purchase another. We're in the north and so a 2/3 bed terrace can be picked up for £100k.
We have the most expensive form of Childcare we know to our local friends and hence feel a bit left behind financially when others can afford niceties that we can't. It's very much 'keeping up with the jones' - but when we probably earn a bit more than most (if not all) our friends but yet have a more humble lifestyle, I can't help but feel a bit selfish and want to spend some money on us. We've signed up to 5 years of nanny costs and yes, we could carry on being tight(-er than we'd like with cash) to privately educate two, but that extra 1k /month to privately educate 3 would have a massive impact on our lives. We already work about 100 hours/week between us without additional hours and at some point as we get older, I'd like to see the light at the end of the tunnel so we can relax with cash.
The purpose of this thread was to see if private ed was an option for us with three given our income because I always think we earn a very good wage and don't understand how others can afford private ed. By the sounds of it, there are the 'mega' rich and those similar/worse than us who struggle on by and sacrifice a lot for children's education.
Our local schools are'outstanding/good' but I went to one of the best (if not the best) non fee paying grammar (in terms of topping league tables) and probably why I've done ok in life. However, there's a big difference between 85% kids getting 5A-C (as in our local secondary) to 50% getting 8 A/As (as in the secondary school I went to) . Education is important to us with both my partner and I having postgraduate qualifications - but it's knowing at what cost and balance of quality or life.
I am very thankful for what I have in life and don't want to come across as whingy about not earning enough. I'm purely trying to find out whether we are just less well off than others who privately educate 3 or whether we need to review our spending habits if everyone else manages on less/similar income without too much financial strain.

Horses for courses - OP. My viewpoint was not meant as a criticism which you have taken as such. With the information you have given and your current outgoings, IMHO, you can afford it if you chose to. You live in the North so the likelihood is that school fees will also be cheaper. I live in the south - school fees where I live are £16k and my mortgage is £1.5k pa. This is entirely subjective - depends on regional costs as well as disposable income. And yes, you have to want to go down this route enough to commit to a substantial amount of money. For most people, even with household incomes of up to £200k pa and more than 1 dc, it normally involves some kind of financial compromise whether it is a more modest holiday or a more modest house!

For me investing in the education of the children (the one investment in a sense no one can ever take away from you) was worth every penny and still is (and I went to private schools myself too from age 4). It sounds like you went to a state school and you feel 5 years of paying for a nanny and now your time has come for more spare cash and your priority will not be paying the same for the next years age 5 - 18 or even 22 in my case as I fund university and that's fine.

The difficulties in families tend to come where one spouse went to private schools and wants that and the other didn't and doesn't. If you both are happy with state schools and feel you don't want that first 5 years of childcare cost to continue for another 18 years that's your choice and your money. 50% of children at even Oxbridge went to state schools. Many children do well there. It would just not be for me or my children but we all make our choices in life.

You could of course move to an area where priivate schools are cheaper than the £16k where you live. In our bit of outer London there is huge choice of private schools. The £12k Haberdashers juniors where my older daughter went is a very good school. My other daughter's NLCS costs more like £15k a year. Even so two of those is still only the same cost as most people int his area's childcare for their toddler if they work full time so you kind of get used to that cost and it just continues if you use private schools.

Most people I know who pay day private schools do it out of current income. We always have. I have not met many who pay it out of inheritance although I suppose a few might have grandparents paying but I would not know that. A very few have such a bright child and such a low income some or all of the fees are paid by the school on a bursary. You would not know that unless the child told you if they were friends with that child. Most though seem to pay out of income. Some of my children's friends are from second generation immigrant families where you might have 4 ot 5 adult wages paying one boy's school fees as it is such a priority that that family "get on" in the next generation but that just reflects the ethnic mix where we live.

My parents waited about 13 years until they had children and both had careers so that they could afford school fees. Every family has different priorities. Also our families are lal about NOT keeping up with the joneses. You do what is morally right and right for you and you couldn't care less what other people think - so if I were you I would give up any comparison with other people thing and just be true to your own self and your own values and concentrate on reaching agreement with your partner on it which is the only thing that really matters.

In answer to your question - I went to state school all the way (although for me this ultimately meant grammar school - I wonder if I went to the same one you did - SGHS?). On the other hand DH went private almost all the way (except the 2 years he lived in the US), and boarded from year 9 onwards.

Neither of ours will board (DS loves the idea, but as we only live 1 street over from his school I really can't justify the extra cost). We sent DD private in year 5 (we have middle schools here, and they are fairly dire). DS moved in year 4 (DH got a big pay rise, so we decided to send DS private before we got used to spending the extra money on something else).

Not the same school. But we had the press at ours every year on results day as inevitably it would either be my school (kendrick) or the adjacent boys school that would top the tables every year (at least during my time).
If we had a similar non fee paying grammar locally, private would not even be a discussion for us. But we don't. And although other local schools might do well by OFSTED - they don't achieve the same level of grades.
However, my husband went to his local comp and has done very well in life and so we both have skewed views. He thinks anyone can do well at a comp and then pay for extra tuition etc as needed. Whereas I have a greater weighting on the actual school itself.

We could probably afford 3x primary private ed fees but it's when they get to secondary that would be the problem. And then we're sucked into the system and would definitely feel the pressure to maintain private ed. the local private school fees is £2,700k a term. No scholarships really (10% for sport or music). We wouldn't qualify for bursaries.

On a separate note, my brother went to private education and he earns a similar amount to me. He earns the least out of his peer group from his private ed school doing a similar job to me. I however, probably earn the most out of my peer group from my non fee paying school. I therefore think private ed sets you up in more ways than just academic grades - a drive to flourish financially, more entrepreneurial, contacts and whatever else that comes with it.

Limpetsmum - if your dh went to a comprehensive and thinks you can do well in and from one, and he's the one that actually knows more about these things, having gone to one... do you not think your fear is based on the unknown, rather than reality??? Or do you secretly think he's less refined than you? Why reject his expert advice over your ignorant fears?...

Well, there's always the state primaries followed by private secondaries option which is the route that we're taking. We don't live in an area blessed with great state comprehensives and we live nowhere near any state grammar schools. If you have a fantastic non fee paying state school, I would go for that and thereby bypassing all the angst/handwringing of prepping for 11+ entrance for selective state/private schools). We use our nearest state primary (which has just been slated in the latest Ofsted report) so I was concerned enough to DIY prep DC1 for the leading selective secondary in the area. (Not looking forward to repeating the experience with DC2 so may well choose to outsource that when the time comes!)

How much are the school fees up North where you are? I have a friend who lives in the North who has a child at a fantastic prep school which costs her £8k pa. Our local prep school costs £12k pa so there is a significant difference. Our local day senior schools is approx £15k - £17k pa. Our annual income is less than yours but our monthly net income is more. Our mortgage costs is close to twice yours. We have 2 DC who are 3 yrs apart and I am prone to be more frugal than not. 3 sets of school fees if overlapping hugely would be tight for us but less so, with another £1k of taxed income. Now, if anyone can follow that, well done for keeping up.

Arna, where is this school that costs £8k p.a. please?

Op,you could go state and supplement with tutoring?

H earns £200k+ and we are struggling to put 3 through prep school. We've had enough and have decided to go state and start living.

DH probably earns the least out of his peer group from private school. I keep telling him how lucky he is to have me making up the difference (I earn more than him, although not by much). Most of his friends have wives who don't work and stay at home with the kids (some of his friends are trapped in high-paying jobs they hate, but can't leave because they couldn't cope with any major drop in income). So far we are the only ones who privately educate our DC (although we had our children early, so no one else has perp school aged children yet). We suspect only a very small minority will privately educate their children.

Yes, I am naive about comprehensives. But I keep saying to my husband he had a mum who didn't work who focused on her kids education as she had the time and inclination. I work (full time but hoping to go part time) but I still have a career that I don't want to give up to focus on kids alone. I appreciate some mums Are happy giving up work but it's not something I am willing to consider.
So it's new territory for both of us as neither of our mums worked and I know my mum spent time on my education. That's not something I can replicate to the same extent with my children. Hence why I'm not convinced they would be as successful as we are on state education.

I should also add we have 3 under 3.5years - so it'll be a big hit all at once with fees.

Arna - secondary fees are £2700 term (scholarship of 10% for music/sport only). We wouldn't qualify for bursary.
Primary cheaper and just about affordable but don't want to start something I can't finish.

Well you know a good start in primary is great too. Just because they don't go to private secondary doesn't mean their education is not finished properly if you see what I mean.

We had three under 4 and I found the opposite - that if they are close in age it's easier as you move from needing a full time nanny stage to 3 sets of school fees i.e. about the same, whereas if you have 3 children 5 years apart you have full time nanny for 15 years and in 10 of those 15 years also school fees for some of the children.

In your boat, Limpetsmum, and given your fears, maybe private primary and state secondary would be something you would consider worth it? I do think the stay-at-home, interested-in-children's-education mum or dad would make the most significant difference to their children in their primary years, and do personally think that does indeed give children a significant advantage if the person staying at home is intelligent, well educated and motivated (at secondary age, a working mum may well be a better role model...), so if you fear your children are missing out on that, then maybe private primary would make you feel better about it? At secondary age, if your children don't have their own personal drive and self-discipline, they are less likely to go on to get brilliant qualifications and have glittering careers wherever they go to school.

Of course, all this is theoretical - you just don't know what will work out for the best, that's the problem. Maybe a well educated, intelligent nanny would be better than private school (which might actually be no better than a state school), anyway... time and personal attention and all that...

I agree with JillyR2015 - having the children close together is better, as it doesn't spread out the agony!

We've put five children through the system on combined income of £120k max.

Blimey Fugacity. How did you manage that?

We live on bread and water