How you afford private school fees?

[notsurehowtodothis]

This isn't intended to be a state vs. private school debate. We are just looking at all the options locally for our two DCs including both state and private schooling and, as our local private schools are in the region of £15-18k per child per year, I just wondered for those of you who pay for private schooling, especially for more than one child, how you find it (as in, what's it like, not 'where' you find it!) making such significant payments each year? And if you've found any great ways to make the payments easier? DH and I only have three viable kidneys between us so options there are limited.....

Ivan's nobody is confusing bursAries with scholarships.
There were obhpjections to someone in £350k salary getting a bursary.

Which I have said that I don't believe is true

Have't read the thread yet- can anyone tell me whether anyone has used the word "sacrifice" yet? I need to be forewarned.

Because if they were paying £2.5k a month and that is after a reduction of 40%, that suggests that the original fees are about 50k a year.

I have not read whole thread and am no longer paying fees but when i did, it was £40 K /yr out of taxed income. I worked six days a week basically.
Luckily i have a job i mostly love and it has a high remuneration rate, but i worked every saturday as 'extra' and every bank holiday, all over Christmas and easter and we had a relatively frugal life ( when is ay frugal i mean for the level of income we had at the time). Every bonus my then DH got went in the pot, and we didnt do stuff to our house that we wanted, never had new kitchen etc.
Basically it is a huge financial commitment, and you have to be prepared for that, it is very much what is a priority for you as a family and how hard are you prepared to work for that? My exdh would much have preferred to just use the local school and have the income to spend, as it was basically my income and my extra work that paid for the school fees i stuck to it. But in the long run it was exhausting and the pressure was huge to keep working harder and harder.

My ds isn't of school age yet but if we end up living where I think we're doing to when he is, he'll be going private as the state schools are all shite. DH is a high earner. I'm a sahm. Houses in the area are pretty cheap. So small mortgage. We also both have older cars paid for in cash. We're not big on grand holidays tbh. And before we had ds dh took a job change to up his income so we could save more money before ds starts school.

We have two six figure incomes. Otherwise it would be difficult since we also have a chunky mortgage.

We need £30k out of our taxed income for two at private school. This will go up a bit since DS2 is still only in prep.

Most of our friends have two high earning parents (vast majority are hospital consultants). Many have some assistance from wealthy grandparents.

New one of my dc is at a private school (others are state) and there is a huge number of hospital consultant parents there too, way outnumbering the lawyers/bankers etc. It's at such a contrast to the threads on here when salaries are discussed.

Also lots of plumbers/builders who have done well in the past ten years. We pay out of earned income, day fees are just under 20k pa.

Got my figures wrong with regards to my other comment, 2.5k after a reduction of 60% would mean that the fees were originally way more than 50k a year to start with

it might be that the hospital consultants are all effectively giving up their saturdays/evenings and bank holidays to do private work as 'extra' to pay school fees

Not the ones that I know red

well the highest paid nhs consultant is on £107 K so i guess if both parents are consultants and you live in a cheap location/area (i.e. not london or south east) and you live quite sensibly you can do it on those salaries but id couldn't , not for two who also boarded part time....hence the extra work

That's basic red, I used to work in the NHS and am in the SE. Anyway, it's an interesting observation.

In our "parent group" at school it is predominantly medic parents. A couple of those consultants are in A&E where they can't do private work however many of the others make a significant amount through private work (and they are not working all of the hours God sends). It's misleading to say a hospital consultant is on a maximum of £107k. BF's DH pulls in circa £180k. We are in the Midlands, not in London and I'm referring to day fees rather than boarding.

In DS1's final year at prep it was 80- 90% medic parents (doctors and dentists) only 2 children had lawyer parents.

Most parents at our school both work - one tends to have a very good job £100k+ (some considerably more) and the other a fairly good job or their own small businesses, but part time. Most have large 4 bed £600k+ houses in a good area, decent cars and seem to go on foreign holidays. Ive no idea if they're mortgaged to the hilt, they're certainly not upper class inherited wealth (as our previous school was). There seems to be little sign though of the majority really struggling to afford the fees.

Im happy with my childrens current school, but I wouldnt have struggled greatly or given myself money worries so they could be there. Not all private schools provide all things, you need to be clear on what you value and want to pay for - better academic results, a gentler atmosphere, individual care, better sporting opportunties, confidence, multiculturalism. ....

Very misleading, there are also clinical excellence awards and other extras.

My children boarded - we could afford it from income. We know we were doing very well to be able to do this. Grandparents have no spare money, only two were alive, and we could not get money from anywhere else, nor did we seek to. We did not scrimp or save either and maintained a good lifestyle.

The parents at the schools ours went to did not vary very much. There are very few poor parents at boarding schools, except for the bursary children. I was never aware of old cars, lack of holidays, and general scrimping and saving. It just did not happen. The typical parents of School A were City Lawyers, a few medics, many business owners, Chief Executives, inherited wealth, City bankers/financiers/insurance, Management consultants in large city firms and a few hedge fund types. School B had more inherited wealth parents, wealthy landowners and people with a public profile, plus business owners and bankers. I saw no poorer parents at School B at all.

They all afforded it, because they had money.

A lot of the families at DD2's private prep school seem to afford it by both parents working full-time and only having had one child.

I've heard some them say they might have considered a second child except that then they couldn't afford school fees.

Whereas I've heard others say that they only wanted one child, then looked around at local primaries and realised that they'd need to pay a whack for wraparound care/ part-time nanny. And at that point realised that an independent school with longer school hours wouldn't cost that much more than the former option. (Though then they sometimes start at the school, realise there are longer school holidays, and panic!)

£100,000 plus will not get you far with £70,000 pa boarding fees and extras for two children. Day schools are a competely different proposition and can be much cheaper, eg GDST schools can be very reasonable.

We both worked, when she was little it was more of a struggle, but as she got older our salaries increased so it became easier. No two ways about it, it is a high cost.

For university, we saved her child benefit since she was born, and this supplements her student loan. No doubt about it her education has cost a small fortune. By the time she's finished uni it will be over 300 grand in total. Worth it, yes I think so. But when you total it up, it is a mind boggling amount.

We didn't do it until year six for both our two. It was not necessary to leave the state system before then.

My friend is a qualified engineer - she was a sahm until her child went to school and they chose their outgoings accordingly (mortgage etc) when she went back to her profession, the additional salary more than easily covered private school for their child but would have covered two children.

Of all the heart breaking, depressing things you see on Mumsnet- and in real life- "we only had one child because we could only afford one set of school fees" is one of the most heartbreaking and depressing.

Combined fees for my dds (15 and 9) are around the £50k mark. But the eldest one is a weekly boarder.

Finding the money isn't a struggle but we certainly don't have it just spare! We prioritise, plan and spend carefully. We don't tend to have the massively expensive holidays three times a year that other parents do (e.g. £1000/night fortnight in the Maldives!) but we do own a property abroad so we're lucky in that sense.

The questions really are:

• do you earn enough money that private education is a realistic option?
• are you prepared for years of careful financial planning and/or lifestyle cutbacks?

Some parents choose the state primary option and then move at 7 or 11 into the private system.

Good luck! Fwiw I think private education is worth its weight in gold. But the state schools around us are rubbish so my assessment is slightly skewed.

I agree with all the comments on here. We have four children in private (since year 3/junior school) but we are up North where private school fees are much cheaper and housing costs cheaper, so we have no mortgage.

We have a nice detached house (nothing fancy) in a cheapish but rural/nice area, but probably have the smallest house out of all the cohort of all children - most live in what I would describe as huge houses with huge gardens. In senior school though the cohort changes to many more people like us, who just get by.

We pay out of earned income, shares/savings. No grandparents' input at all. I don't know if we'll be able to pay all the way through yet. We've had some lucky and unlucky turns so far. We've had redundancy (x2) and also some luck with shares, so who knows what the future holds. We take one year at the time. We try and pay one year in advance so that if things go pear shaped it gives us time to make a plan.

It would be hard to move them back into the state system, but I am sure they would be ok. Only time where it would be very hard is between year 9 and year 11 after they have made their GCSE choices, but hopefully it won't come to that.