Budgeting for boarding school outside of the fees

[roseandviolettea]

What kind of things outside of the obvious fees should I budget for?

So dc wear expensive clothes every day after school?

Do I have to budget for expensive trips?
Is it usual to buy sports equipment or do you get to use the school items?

Do the dc get progressively more expensive as they get older in the school?!

Anything tips/advice welcome!

Yes to expensive trips.

Sports equipment usually needs to be bought, the games uniform is a huge expense - different tops for different weather, different bottoms, house t-shirts, branded tracksuits. Etc. Cost me £500 to kit DD out with games stuff and uniform when she went.

Clothes - up to the individual. Your DC will soon tell you what they want to wear!!

Also - pocket money if they're old enough to go into town after school/weekends.

@Ishacoco thanks, who decides the pocket money? Me or what everyone else is having...

Fairly sure my parents had to pay for my exam entries (GCSE/A Levels) and for my extra curricular stuff - flute and piano lessons/drama/riding/LAMDA etc. but maybe that has changed now.

School trips abroad, uniform, sports kit, pocket money/allowance etc.

And don't forget fees increase every year....esp with inflation!

@roseandviolettea If you ask MNHQ to move this to the Boarding School topic you may find helpful threads and also attract more responses.

It really does depend on the individual school - and to some extent on whether you have a daughter or son.

My impression is that non-uniform dressing can be somewhat oppressively competitive at some girls’ schools - but I have no recent experience.

At the boys’ schools I’m familiar with it’s rather the opposite - they take pride in dressing as scruffily as possible - so that’s not a significant expense.

Uniform and sportswear - major initial expense. Major at our senior school, and of course there’s no way most of a 13 year old’s kit will fit them at 17 /18 - however oversize you might initially buy.

You’re entirely free to choose which non-compulsory trips your child goes on. The vast majority of the school will not be going on any given trip.

Instrument tuition adds up.

Coffee shops and pizza orders seemed to be their main voluntary spending - but may not be relevant at all schools.

Actually the largest slightly unexpected expense was travel to and from school. Even if you know in theory how many days, weekends, half terms and termly holidays there are - by the time you add in visiting for plays, concerts, matches, whatever - it’s almost a full time job and you’ll spend a lot of time in your car or on a train (or plane).

@Gruelle thank you! I didn't even realise there's a boarding bit on here Gosh I completely forgot about travelling to sports matches etc thanks. Uniform woes are real! I have that sadness every time I leave the uniform shop at our current prep over all the items we have to purchase, do they do that annoying thing in senior schools where they ask for an item that then never get used?

this year at our school it is the leotard. No one likes them and no one has worn them! It's my dd we are looking at going so I imagine clothes budget does need to factored in.

Therapy for your child when they are an adult

The thing it’s important to factor in is the fact that teenagers inevitably develop expensive habits and hobbies - whether that’s hair and nails or sailing or drama. They won’t necessarily be boarding specific - so it wouldn’t be fair to set them down as a boarding expense, as you’d be paying for those things whether day or boarding.

DD's cohort apparently liked shopping at Primark for clothes (she finished a couple of years ago), so competitive non-uniform dressing might not necessarily be a thing. I agree though about travel costs, we were back and forth fairly frequently (not too far in our case). Exeats and half-term pickups might be lunchtime or afternoon, which can make driving pickups easier but that only works if you don't work fulltime or have flexibility.

They'll probably need a laptop as well as a smartphone, though that's likely enough to apply anywhere nowadays. (DD has just had a new laptop for uni, her school one lasted just about).

One good thing about girls at senior school is there's a reasonable chance they won't grow out of their uniform. But then, they may have a different one for 6th form :(

Agree that with games kit, it could pay to attempt to work out what is really likely to be used. DS we got what was advertised as the minimum requirements for less-sporty boys and has still successfully avoided using some of it ...

Interested in this too, can anyone chip in and add some actual numbers from real life experience? Someone on another thread wrote 5k in extras for Eton of which circa 2k is for music lessons, the rest is extra trips, sports gear, travel and clothing, which I still find more than a little bit excessive…

Pocket money - between £45 - 75 per term.
Fancy formal nights between £40 - 100 per event, depending on whether it included a sit down dinner and outside entertainment.
End of year party £15 - £20
Music lessons & exams (same as a day or state school)
Second hand uniform if the school is set up for it.
Tuck - either bought and sent to your DC or Dc buys it when home.
Trips are no different to day or state school
All sports equipment was included except for shin pads, mouth guards & various boots.
Outside clothes (for evenings and weekends) varied. Some DC had expensive clothes, but the house parents specifically asked for machine washable clothes that could be tumbled to be sent in.

Pocket money - considerably more than that per term.

Fancy formal nights out. If taken out by Housemaster or Tutor (year group or Tutor group) that member of staff would pay. Any school party or gathering - paid for by the school. (So both of those effectively came out of school fees.)

Tuck - either bought and sent to your DC or Dc buys it when home. This sounds totally Enid Blyton! And somewhat outside my experience. In this century both the prep and senior schools had a High St within spitting distance, where pupils could buy whatever they wanted. Even in the last century there was never any real requirement for food from home - there was a school shop for snacks and we could go into town at weekends. In both generations you might arrive with a cake or whatever after an exeat - but there was never any need for an actual tuck box of food for … hoarding.

Well, yes, of course each school does things differently! I certainly wasn’t discounting your experience, just offering a different one.

And I have every faith that the OP will check the specifics of every single aspect of boarding life both in the handbook the school should provide, and with the Housemistress.

I'm so ignorant thanks for any advice in the very least it helps me to investigate things j may not even realise. I am still looking at prospective schools.
The last school we saw had tuck boxes but perhaps they were for younger pupils.

we have music lessons to pay for and some sports stuff but probably end up paying most of that elsewhere if not at school anyway.

Completely agree.

Except they do have tuck they hoard- but they buy it themselves at local shops.