Private school fees

[muffinhead4]

I have been try to work out if we can afford private school fees for our 2 children in the next few years but after doing sums we could barely manage 1 let alone 2 😔
Before tax we earn approx £100K which is most definitely not enough, this got me thinking how do parents pay for private school for more than 1 child? Am I missing a trick? I know some grandparents help but those that pay them selves how do you do it? What kind of jobs? I am in finance and DH is in training, neither very high up.

How much are the school fees? What other bills do you have?
Day school will be half the price of boarding school.
We pay two sets of day school fees out of our income but have no mortgage.

There have either

1. inherited
2. grandparents pay
3. earn it.
4. have had a stint overseas in a tax haven or job with lots of financial perks to save up.
5. bursaries/military/clergy

there is an awful lot of 1&2. of 3 there are a lot of business owners, people who work in finance, drs with private practice and an awful lot of people with property portfolios on the side (which probably also comes via 1).

@muffinhead4
Thats ok for one child. Not 2. Boarding isn’t twice day but it might be! There’s a huge variation in day fees. Lower end fees then charge loads of extras.

How did we afford it? DH earned way more than you and that was 15-20 years ago now. If your income is not paying a mortgage, it would help. If grandparents have money to distribute, that helps. Otherwise, it’s cheaper to move!

How much are the fees? Our local private primary is about £18,000 a year but there are a few additional costs on top (uniform, any extra curricular activities etc.)

Only you will have access to your accounts and knowledge of what's affordable.

We have three lots of day fees. Will be four in a couple of years. Upper school is 24k & lower 16k plus extras. It was 17 & 11k back in 2009 when our eldest started. Yearly Increases are very much the norm.
100k per annum would cover everyone’s uniforms, extra curricular, trips etc.

Its a huge commitment. We’ve seen lots of families come & go over the years because they underestimate how much so.

Id say that you need to be earning at least four or five times the fees to have it not be a strain. I know people who can’t afford holidays or a new car & think private education is massively important. It really isn’t if you are very restricted & it’s at the expense of all else.

It really depends on your other expenses and family support. There are people with multiple homes who live in mansions and families living in flats at my DDs school. Lots of lawyers.

I think on less than £200k it would be a struggle without external help or no mortgage for London day fees.

We have put 3 through day school. No inheritance or outside help.
We live in a smaller house than we might otherwise. To start with we sacrificed holidays etc and money was tight. Not so much now.
So we have managed it out of income (one) and savings (built up over years pre DC when on 2 salaries)

Many children are supported. I worked in a boarding school for years until recently, and 20% of our children were on bursaries or assisted places, some of them up to 100% of fees. They'd won scholarships or were very bright and the families were means tested etc.

There were other children of forces families or diplomats etc., the parents had huge help with fees through their workplace. Many jobs which send parents overseas pay for their children's education back in the UK as part of the job package.

Some charities will pay towards school fees, or workplace charities such as Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy etc.

Depends where you live/which school you’re considering.

If they earn it, they don’t have children until they’re more established in their careers and are earning enough. Other than the inherited wealth/help from grandparents, you won’t find that many who had babies young (i.e. younger than 35). You say you’re “not very high up” in Finance, and your husband is in training. It all depends what your earning potential is in the near future is surely, what your husband is training in, and how old your kids are.

We don't have inheritance or bursaries or high paid jobs or any of the stuff mentioned above. We work really hard, only holiday about every 4 years, drive old cars and chose a school with relatively low fees. Once I consider how much it would have cost in a state school for wrap around care, school dinners, and then swimming lessons etc after school it doesn't work out much more for us, especially in the early years.

Everyone I know who sends their kids to private school pays for wrap around care of some sort too, it isn’t included in the school fees (nor is it provided at some of them). But in terms of what they do, they’re investment bankers, corporate lawyers, or business owners. I agree with @LondonGirl83 , if their paying fees out of their own salary, a minimum of £200k combined is likely what they’re on. But in London £100k combined would barely enable you to get a mortgage on a house, so I’m not surprised it’s not affordable if that’s where you are!

My dh's sister is putting her two through a very expensive private school at the moment, they earn under £50k. The first one got a small bursary, some help from relatives and then they applied to lots of charities and found an individual who was looking to sponsor a child through private school. They then managed to do the same for the second child without the bursary. I actually think this sort of arrangement is not that unusual.

We pay for two sets of private school fees from earnings (£45k after tax, around £90k gross). I've mostly been a SAHM and sometimes worked part time since they've been at school so it's funded from my husband's salary who's a director at a large U.K. firm.

I only know one family (of hundreds I've met) who fund it from grandparent contributions. Most parents work in finance and investment banking, but there's also a fair few doctors, lawyers and business owners.

All the local families we know fund it in one of the following ways:

1. Very high income (think £300k+
2. grandparents pay or try ere is trust fund for school fees
3. single child, bursary and hardworking parents who may intention decision to have one for his reason.
4. one parent in six figure job, one parent teaching at school with good staff reduction.

This may be skewed by the fact we live in the SE. House prices are high and all local schools are expensive (c£9k/term for day students in upper secondary).

The people I know who pay school fees earn VERY VERY good money (household over 7 figures in a couple of cases).

Ive just advised a couple with 3 kids and family income of c£250k and a big mortgage that they can’t afford it AND have any pension provision.

school fees are relentless, be careful unless you have certain finances

Where we live (outside London) it's mainly people with their own companies and teachers with children at the school who get a generous discount. A few have trust funds but most are funding it out of income. Secondary boarding fees are £30-40k per year and day fees are £15-30k per year.
Where we are I would say 2 children on day school fees is affordable on about £100-150k gross. Our school is very all in so you don't need many additional activities and activities are much cheaper here than in London. Friends of ours spend £12k per year in London on after school activities for 2 kids.

My husband had four kids (two with me). All four went to private school, one boarded from 13. High salary is how we paid for it, and after he passed away (eldest two had left education by then but my youngest had just started) I moved to a much cheaper area and made certain financial decisions to continue.
The system in this country seems odd to me - where I grew up you went to your nearest school without fail but here the schools are often clustered together and you don't (my son did not get offered a place at our FOUR nearest state schools).

We didn't in the end. She went to the local (very good) state comprehensive school. We took the view that if DD was struggling that we would pay for tutors. She only needed a tutor for GCSE maths in which she achieve an A*, then managed to achieve excellent A level results and go on to achieve a first in a STEM degree at an RG university.

We just weren't prepared to struggle and live on the breadline to pay school fees.

We were lucky to have an outstanding (in every way) primary school on our doorstep. Even the wealthiest families send their DC there as there is no point in paying to get the same level of a rounded education.

Is it feasible to move to an area with better state schools?

Is there a sibling discount?

We earn around £100k but we live in Yorkshire and have low mortgage.
School fees are around £12k a year each but DD had a 25% scholarship and we paid for 2 for a couple of years before DD left. It was affordable

For us, at primary (5%) but not at secondary

I don’t know how they afford it either. We have a combined income of over £100k as well. Kids are at state school. To the ones saying wrap around care. That’s only early years. They walk to school from year 5. Year 7s pick their siblings up after school. You save a lot going to state even with wrap around care and activities.

We have one child at private school and I am pregnant. We have no help with fees, so need to earn it. I will have six months of maternity leave and will go back part time. I am self employed, so cannot take more time than that, we need to be saving for DC2 to go to school. We could not just pay the fees as they become due, we save. We try and have a year's fees in an account at all times for DC1 and plan to get to the same position for the baby, more if possible.

Be aware that school fees tend to increase by more than inflation (3-6% per year) on top of being higher in upper years.