Is anyone borrowing money on their mortgage to pay the fees up front?

[Sdpbody]

We have DD's at PS in Year 6. Fees are currently £3k/pcm going £3.6k/pcm (with the VAT).

Is anyone considering borrowing money and adding to mortgage to make it more affordable.

It would be £1.2k a month added to our mortgage for 5 years of private school for both of them. Mortgage is currently £1.5k. And then we could over pay £2.4k a month on the mortgage in general but wouldn't have to contend with fee increases over the 5 years.

£3.6K a month!! Are the local schools really that terrible? I wouldn't be putting myself in this financial position unless I was desperate.

It is a lot but the local state schools are really awful and not where we want to send them.

They have both just sat the Glos 11+ but we would have to move house for them to get there, and that's if they pass.

Yep we did, but only to pay the fees in advance to avoid the VAT rise.

Fees in advance paid after the announcement (back in July) won't be exempt from VAT

And it's not clear to me whether fees in advance paid before then will remain exempt (there was wording about the fees being set, and so I'm not sure how that will work for future years, so there could be an argument that the annual fees after 24/25 had not been set at the time of pre-purchase - maybe someone who understands the detail of that better will be able to elucidate?)

You will have to pay fee increases.

dds fees have been paid until she is 18 but they are worked out by the bursar to take an average rise into account (I think they have accounted for an 8% rise next academic year and we had to pay 13% extra this year). We still pay the same fees as everyone else and the same increases. We hope we won't need to add anything to the pot. The money is held in an account by the school and drawn down by the school termly. We do gain interest on the account and there is a small discount for paying in advance but only small, a couple of %.

so you will pay more in interest adding to your mortgage than you will save by any discount offered by your school for paying in advance. Borrowing against the mortgage is not a sensible option.

@RoseAndRose we won't pay any VAT, this has been confirmed in correspondence from school as the fees were paid last year. At least I hope not.

I'd also say, if you can't afford private school out of ready funds, you can't afford private school. It's a massive financial commitment that just gets more and more every year.
the only reason we can do it on a household income of over £100k is because my parents pay the fees. And that's only for 1 child on a scholarship. At least our income allows Dd to Keep Up with some of the wealthier families, which gets increasingly important as they get older. She gets to go on all the trips and do extras because we don't have to pay the bulk of the fees. She still moans about having a small house (our crappy 4 bed worth £600k+ 😂) to her friends any being "the poor ones" and we only go to a very mid range school.
my parents struggled to put me through private school (they have inherited quite a lot since then) and I resented never being able to do any of the extras like my friends did.

I am flabbergasted that someone would consider such an immense cost that they can’t afford to pay for something that is quite frankly available for free to the majority of the population. It’s almost as if they would rather financially ruin themselves than mix with the normals!

£3.6k per month for what, around 10 years gives you enough to buy your kids a lot of ponies, ski holidays, annual week in the Caribbean, piano lessons, theatre trips, and enough left over for a car at 17 and a whole actual house. Alternatively you could get school-minus-plebs and beans on toast for dinner every day. I know which I would spend the money on!

Just like with a new, well, anything - if you have to borrow against your home, you cannot afford it! No matter how nice to have it might be.

First world problems at their finest!

Jesus, people were baying for a private school page so they could avoid posts about private schools. MN obliged and now people who are against private schools are purposely posting on PS posts! Scroll past if you don't agree with it.
It's like reading posts on a page for fish farmers saying you hate fish farming!

It doesn't sound like you can easily afford it. Do you have a contingency plan?

I do know people who are paying several years in advance to get a cheaper rate at their DC's private school. I am not sure they are re-mortgaging though. I think it's mainly when they get a decent bonus

Mortgages can be a vehicle for private fees but generally it seems to be a good tool if you’re ploughing money into a pension for the tax relief and plan to repay the mortgage money from a pension pot. When I ran the numbers it didn’t really work for me but might have if I was older and could access the pension not long after paying fees.

Your numbers also seem a bit optimistic for secondary school. Local day schools near me are more like 24k plus vat per child. What would you be doing for 6th form and university? I don’t think you can assume you’d have loads of money to overpay after the 5 years

eg to borrow £150k at 4.5% over 20 years it would be £950 a month but the total paid would be £228k. It’s that last number that worried me and would stop me from using a re-mortgage as you really are having to pay a lot more in total if you let the mortgage money run to term. If you’re very confident you can massively overpay at the 5 year point it might not be so bad.

No one needs to search for topics… I don’t even know this was possible (maybe a private school education might have taught me how)
Posts just magically appear on my feed… or whatever it’s called…I have no real interest in step children, weight loss drugs, ideas for dresses for wedding guests & loads more…these things just appear!
if I read something that I might have an opinion on I might comment…usually I just roll my eyes & search twitter for clips of cute animals!

If you're considering moving to Gloucestershire for grammar why not just move to be nearer a better state school comp? We live in Glos and there are schools like Henley Bank that have significantly improved in recent years and you can't get a 3-4 bedroom house close enough to get you high on the waiting list for £300k to £350k. There'll be other schools in the county very similar.

Yet every post on Active comes under a clear subheading ie Chat/AIBU/Private Schools so you can choose to engage or not

If you send DC to state perhaps they could be the ‘rich one’ lol

Oh do fuck off - see the private school slant on scouse council estate accent. Let people just ask questions - if you don't like it scroll past.
Mumsnet ban me if you want.

Wow that's double what I earn. How depressing.

In reply to OP - seek financial advice and do what is best for your DC and your family.

Just have one less holiday or car? Downsize?