Funding private fees - how do you do it?

[Account18]

Interested to hear -

did you have a starting fund earmarked for fees?
or are you reliant on annual income only?
or do you have a commitment from e.g grandparents

or a mix of two/three/anything else?

Single parent and pay out of income. 4 more payments left until he leaves 6th form!

Savings from pre children
absolutely no way would I pay school fees out of income? It’s too important to have the stability in a world where monthly income is not guaranteed.

Pay for 2 out of income but I’m a teacher at their school so we get a generous discount.

Savings earmarked but using salary to preserve savings. Also a single parent have been saving hard using bonuses. Have reduced hours due to health so it’s going to be tight for next 5 years.

My DS - my dad paid as we couldnt afford it at the time, but we knew he wouldn’t get on very well at a much bigger state school. After a couple of years our circumstances changed and we could afford to pay out of DH’s income, but my DF still wanted to pay.

DD’s - we pay out of our savings as DD1 is currently pre prep and DS went state for pre school/primary, then DF will pay for both girls when they start secondary so it’s fair. Our savings massively rocketed a couple of years ago for various reasons, but we could afford to pay out of income too.

2/3rds income, 1/3rd grandparents.

We pay out of our income but don’t have a mortgage.

I keep 1 year in the bank "buffer" and pay out of income for two DC.

I'm self employed and the main earner but am insured to a level meant to cover the fees if anything happened to me.

Exactly the same here. We have a year’s buffer in the bank and pay out of income. Income is insured as much as it possibly can be.

Same, we paid off the mortgage before having children. No family support or inheritance.

Planned divorce from the income-generating partner 2 years in advance and intentionally not working. Bursary funded.

Did you want to divorce him?

Converted inheritance into an insurance type plan over 10 years. The final instalments we will pay from income.

Everyone else in my family died and left me with just enough to send dd after IHT. Well, it was, until they decided to tax it all YET AGAIN.

Out of income. We are both very high earners. Enough saved by end of this year to cover the final payments so I can retire.

No, we are still together. Divorce on paper just for the bursary.

Surely not

Ah ok, fraud then.

GPs pay most as a means of reducing IHT exposure. We save the near equivalent out of income, and would be able to fund to next transition (at a minimum) if GP support stopped.

when we started private the plan was for us to pay entirely out of income - we could do so comfortably and had a healthy savings pot as backup- but steeply rising fees (thanks vat) coupled with cost of living (mortgage increase in particular) would have made things quite tight on an income only basis.

mixture of things.

first, we’ve always lived under our means, one normal car and not a big house or extravagant holidays, not because we’re ‘tight’, we’re just happy with normal things.

then, whenever my husband had bonuses while working in banking, we used it to pay off the mortgage.

had child at 39 mortgage free and husband continuing to be a high earner so we paid all primary education from his salary (i don’t work anymore)

then he had a substantial windfall from selling his company and we have enough saved for the rest of secondary and university.

We pay out of DH's annual salary but we have assets that could be used to pay for fees if there was an issue with salary. Keeping the assets invested rather than using them to pay for fees as it's more tax-efficient and the returns are better. No help from family.

For full disclosure we don’t have any help with the actual fees but my Dad pays for their music lessons.

Started paying out of income but over the years was able to put aside enough to ensure future payments were covered. I only have five years left of school to go (across 2 children) so now those years will be paid out of savings

We pay via income/savings. We don't spend like crazy. We live comfortable, but are not the flashy type. Car is secondhand, not interested in designer clothes etc. We already have the money saved for full fees.

I believe both parents must be assessed, regardless if divorced or together!