school fees insurance-worth it??

[ariane5]

Dd1 got a large bursary to a lovely school, they recommended school fees insurance for the portion of fees we have to pay.

Is it worth it? Everybody I have spoken to with dds already at the school doesn't have it as they already have the fee money set aside.

It is a struggle for us to make up the difference but just about manageable-woyld fees insurance cost a lot each month? We don't want to pay out more than we can afford for something we may not need? Do these policies pay out easily if for example dh lost his job or one of us became ill?

Does anybody have such a policy and is it expensive? Also if it is a good idea which is the best company?

Thanks

We didn't take out the insurance with DD who attended a day school, but did with DS who boarded from year 9. The main reason for not taking it for DD was because she was never sick & yes accidents happen, but fortunately didn't happen to her. DS is a different kettle of fish & how pleased were we that we had cover when he had three weeks off with glandular fever & then another two weeks when it flared up again some months later.

The one thing to bear in mind is that they usually preclude existing conditions so you can't claim for loss of income if it results from something you had before; I'm not sure therefore how easily they pay out or manage to wangle out of it.

The quote we had didn't seem too expensive but we haven't taken it out since dh has fairly serious health issues which would be excluded (main earner) but we do (fortunately) also have most of the fees saved for the senior five years.

This is what worries me as dh and I and our 4 dcs have a genetic condition, if that were to cause dh to be unable to work I doubt they'd pay out.

We just don't want to be pointlessly paying for a policy when we don't have much money anyway.

Our policy paid out when the school was closed by swine flu, paid for all our premiums before and since!

It might be worth tasking an IFA with finding a policy that doesn't work in the way I described or with finding one which will actively preclude your conditions but charge you less (so at least you're covered for new illnesses). I don't know if such a thing would exist - you can get tailor made travel ins etc but this will be a smaller market so maybe not.

ds1 had a bursary and we didn't bother, ds3 still there and we still haven't bothered

You need to check what sort of fees insurance you are thinking of. Do you mean a policy that will cover fees in the event that your dd is too ill to attend school or do you mean a policy to pay out in the event that something happens to you/your dh which means you cannot afford to pay fees? The former is usually offered by the school and added to the term's bill. I've never bothered with the former. I've also never bothered with the latter as I wasn't aware that you could get a special school fees insurance that wasn't just a standard income protection policy.

We were thinking of a policy that would pay fees if dh could not work for whatever reason BUT the most likely reason he would have to give up would be the pre existing condition making him ill or one of dcs being ill (they all have a genetic cond and dd2 is diabetic) but as these are pre existing I imagine the premiums would be expensive.

We had to get special travel ins a few years ago and it cost us loads. We don't want to spend too much as have already had to cut back in order to start saving for fees (dd1 starts in sep) and don't want to be paying out what would be better saved for fees themselves rather than a policy that would probably be useless.