how do you afford private school fees?

[beautifulgirls]

I am interested to know how you afford private school fees? Are you lucky enough to have a good household income or do you subscribe to any of the school fees investment schemes that exist? If you subscribe, how good are they, which do you use? We will make sure we afford it for our kids, but it will stretch us on our current income unless we can make the money go further somehow. I fully intend to work more hours once they start school so that should help too, but things are not always that simple.

We only have one child at present (possibly for good) and DH has a good salary in a secure job.

2 children income of approx £40k this year (last year was a bad year £30k but next year looks to be more)

Very low mortgage (we originally bought on 1 salary)

I have 1 job, dh has 2 p/t jobs plus runs a business

Only holidays are free in my parents caravan

We only run 1 car

We don't go out

Only dd is there at the moment but we pay into an ISA each month the equivalent of 2 lots of fees. We managed to pay the 1st two terms out of savings from an old pre children ISA we had.

I did a breakdown of my bank statements in January, it went like this.

Monthly Income £2,750

Food & Household provisions £212
Meals Out £80 (it was my birthday)
Mortgage £436
Insurances £206
Pension £47
Petrol £100
Utilities 320
Clothes & Presents £60
Medical Bills £33
Other £100
School Fees ISA £1,000

Surplus £156

If you think it would be hard and you have young children start saving for 2ndary private school.

Get a tutor in year 6 to go over the 11 plus exam a million times. Many private schools take plenty of state school children in at 11.

I know a teacher at our school and the fees for her daughter are half price.

i think that private primary school for a very bright child is not essential (ds is very very bright, already at just under 3 beginning to read, will be going to local state primary next year, it is the best primary where we live, fab reports from parents, so i am not worried, will only go private under 11 years if he hates his state school or i feel it is substandard.

so i have 7 years to work and save (am setting up my own business when he starts school) before he needs loads of cash for school and uni.

i also put in max. of £1200 into his CTF (a share tracker index fund earing him loads more than bog standard cash CTF) every year, so he should have around £44,000 by the time he is 18 which i won't allow him to spend on fast cars or fast women - it will go towards a deposit for his flat/house or uni. fees.

I don't know but we always just about manage. dh is on a good wage but not a great wage, wedon't buy lots of stuff bbut that's mainly because we don't want it. We just get it together in a bit of a haphazard way. We are panicing a bit, now we have baby number two.

yellowrose, we are in the same situation
only that how do you know your DC will actually get into the excellent primary??

there certainly is no guarantee around here.

sodor - £212 on food and provisions a MONTH is bloody impressive. We seem to spend £90 a WEEK, which works out almost twice your expenditure. Do you shop at Lidl??!

amid, we don't live in London, less pressure on schools here and we live practically 3 mins. walk away from the school i have in mind so they would have to give me a bloody good resaon why my son can't get in, it is our nearest school, we practically live next door to it, so we are well within the catchmnet. last year every child in the catchment got in so i live in hope . in fact we moved out of London because we weren't in the catchmnet for any of the best state schools and i didn't wish to pay the outrageous primary school fees there.

As the mortgage and private school fees are the big expenses, if you don't earn enough so something has to give, then the choice is either big mortgage/state school or smaller mortgage/private school. Depends on which you prefer to invest in. At least in London.

No, Asda mainly. I do have to admit that month we did seem to spend less than usual. We go round my parents for tea twice a week, they look after our kids while we work Fridays & Saturday. Dd gets a main meak included at school.One thing I do which has cut our bills is to use the local grocers in the street next to where I work and buy fruit and veg etc as and when we need it rather than do big shops. We pay slightly more per item, but waste a lot less food. When we did big shops we were throwing uneaten stuff out every week. If we run out we nip up the co-op late shop. AGain, more expensive but we only buy what we need.

I'll have to save my receipts to see exactly what we do buy per month.

We are planning to move to a grammar school area. A relative of mine had to pull her children out of private school as the fees were crippling them and they hadn't planned for the large rise in fees each year.

Also UQDad, my £100 of other includes cash drawn out of the cashpoint sone of which (maybe half) wil have gone on bits from the local shop.

islandofsodor - do you have decent company-funding into your pension?

We looked at the school fees plans when Ds1 wasd tiny, and ioo they were not good value, and most of them took pretty high management charges. Do agree with saving now though, will provide you with a good cushion. We pay fees 9 months of the year, and save hard during the other 3 to spread the load.
Teachers at our school get 50% off, have almost been tempted to do PGCE to try and get job but only tempted atm
I'm sure many of the parents who do have flashy cars (and by no means all do) are living on the never never (a good friend works for a credit control company so has access to lots of aprents credit files, to her credit she's always been far too professional to reveal names )

The big mortgage is fine if you're not paying just for the school catchment area though.

In order to get the same size of house (and more importantly to me garden) that I have now but in the sought-after Sanderstead school catchment area (only 0.5mile of so from here) I'd possibly be looking at an extra £100-150k as well as either a longer commute (10-20 mins each way so 1hr 40 - 3hr 20 per week) or getting a 2nd car for dh. So we'd be paying £5-7.5k per annum of mortgage interest and possible running costs of a second car - as well as having to repay the £100-£150k capital. I know that in theory I'll still have a valuable asset in the house, but if the house price is in any way inflated by the catchment then that can be disturbed by either a change in head, or changes in admission policies or whatever else happens in the next 15 years.

Thinking about it there's probably already something built into the local house pricing actually - we live in a blackhole for state school admissions unless you manage the very strict CofE requirements. There isn't a local state primary school in this residential area, and the nearest primary schools in walking distance are private.

Ladymuck, you are right about house prices already factoring a premium within catchment of a good school. The choice is a smaller house (eg 2/3 bedroom) within catchment rather than a bigger house (eg 3/4 bedroom), which would be much more comfortable. Or move out of London!

Then I don't understand the trade-off that you referred to earlier? If I downsized I would have the same size mortgage, a smaller house and a state school - admittedly a good one, but still 30 in a class. Therefore paying school fees not only gets me 16 to a class but a larger house and garden?

Ladymuck in our case it does - house prices here are around half what they are near the nearest cluster of good state schools. (we are in catchment for a truely awful secondary) so yes we have smaller mortgage, and bigger house/garden and between 18-20 to a class.

i think we have the worst of all worlds!
live in Richmond borough
in good catchment areas for primary schools so house prices are truly truly crippling
the 2 nearest primary schools are private (£8-£9k pa)
i would be happy with the primaries... but you can't get in! we are less than a mile away and others on our road didn't get in. people buy houses right next to the schools.

it's a nightmare
now struggling to see if anyway we can afford private. but really don't see why we should. the alternative may be a 45min drive each way to school.

how dull a lto of your lives soudn htough
what will oyur kdis memories be?
my parents were boring sods?

that is catchment area for good state primaries!

so that makes £2. 50