Those with 3 or more children at private school how do you afford it?

[cranbury]

DH has for the first time said he would quite like a third child. We could probably stretch to afford it at prep school but secondary I can't see how we would do it unless I worked full time too and even then it would seriously impact our finances.

Grandparents not an option, they each have too many other grandchildren. We are both approaching 40 so don't want to remortgage in the future. We only have a small mortgage and hope to pay it off before eldest starts secondary school.

How do others manage.

You know you could have a 3rd child and send your kids to state school .

why on earth not go state?? would you really rather have 2 expensively educated children and never know what your third might have been like?

If it's only one extra set of fees at Senior level your worried about (I'm assuming that you have decided you can afford to put DC1 and DC2 all the way through) then I would choose a school with a decent discount for siblings.
Then once the mortgage has been paid off I would continue to pay equivalent or significant amounts into a saving account to use for DC3 fees.

Or I would send them all to state for primary and then an Independent for senior school.

so you would pull two children out of private school to have a third child...

well you can get sibling bursaries which might help a lot - mine are at state school but am one of a brood of 7 privately educated and we wore hand-me-down knickers etc

To not have a 3rd child because of the fear of school fees is a bit odd....

How old are the first two?
Do you live in grammar school catchment?

Everyone I know with three privately educated dc's pins their hopes on grammar schools for secondary.

if you worked full-time would that cover it?

consider your options.pick what you can live with
3rd child potential struggle
2dc and comfortably off
you work ft (why isnt this an option?)
all 3 at local state school

We'll be putting all five of ours through the independent system.
We use DH's salary to pay for school.

If I couldn't afford it for all of them, though, I'd just take them out and put them in state. I'd rather do that than not have another child.

If you have set your heart on private education, then I can understand that this is a consideration in having another child.

What about a fairly significant gap, so that the overlap is not for too many years? Also, delay putting them in to private school until 8/9, again so that the overlapping years are reduced?

3 children working full-time would not work well in terms of childcare costs especially the long holidays - currently work part time term time only

yes we have grammar schools nearbyish but when they have an open evening it brings the whole area to a standstill - that option is like winning the lottery, its all about the exam on the day.

Only a 10% discount at the prep school for a third, currently have a boy and girl, the state secondaries are terrible for boys but good for girls

i went private my brother went to a very good state secondary - my brother still has a huge chip on his shoulder about this so its all private for my kids or all state (but would have to move house as boys/mixed school so dreadful).

I would do your last option - move house to somewhere with better state schools. Very sad to not have a third if you really want one if this is your only consideration. I do agree wholeheartedly though that what you offer one you need to offer the other.

3 children working full time would help our household costs considerably

shoves youngest up chimney

but seriously, I have 3 children and no husband or maintenance and we manage fine without school fees - I suppose it depends how important it all is to you

Well you could always have 4 children and sell the fourth for parts thus raising enough money to send 3rd to private school...

What are your local primary schools like? We have 3 DCs (although 9 years between DC 2 and DC3) and DC1 & DC2 went to the local (good) primary school, and then to independent senior school. DC3 will go to the village state infant next year, so we will only have 2 sets of school fees simultaneously. Quite a few round here do state primary, private senior, so they were by no means the only ones.

Am expecting our third child, which realistically now rules out private ed for us - but that's after establishing how poor the private ed options are in the county!

Currently pretty happy with state primary but secondary option less so (although there is time for it to change), so we will either move to an area which has excellent grammar schools (dc1 capable of getting in, too early to say for others) and good state secondary about 25miles away OR I will get a teaching job in a private school with offset the fees.

My old neighbours in London took out a 2nd mortgage which the two children now contribute to paying off.

The families with 3 or more I know have mainly already paid off their mortgage, are both in well paid posts (both medics for example) or have made a choice not to have annual holidays, keep old cars going etc. We are ot in the south east so fees for good schools are not as extortionate.

We are planning to go private for all our three eventually. DS1 is currently at prep school and DD1 and DS2 at state primary. The question for us is really when DD1 and DS2 will go private - definitely at 11 but maybe earlier if we can afford it.

We are comfortable but not massively well off. We can afford it by having paid off our mortgage already and giving up on the idea of moving house again while the children are at school. We both worked really hard to pay off the mortgage to put us in this position. We don't take expensive holidays and run our car into the ground. We save what we can so have a pot of money to cover future fees.

If fees go up or we find it hard we'll explore grammar options - DH would not remortgage the house.

I think the answer is that you need to start making plans/saving as soon as possible - paying fees out of income is not a solution even if you are on a great salary.

Message withdrawn

Slummymomma - interested that you say paying fees out of income is not a solution. It is for us and many parents at DS's school.

Agree that a lot of parents finance school fees out of income. That is why there are so many dual working parents at my dd's school.