Salary to consider private

[Duckyneedsaclean]

Just wondering at what take home salary you would consider/be able to pay for a private school place?

We were hoping for a bursary but not been granted one - trying to figure out if we can afford full fees.

if you are trying to work out if you can afford (family of 7!!!£ then no way!) I wasn’t prepared to go private on a family income of £140k in the SE. Didn’t seem worth it.

We paid out of monthly income...it's was for two from nursery to end of alevels, flexi boarding for both and full boarding for one in sixth form.
It was incredibly financially challenging.
Just paid last term of fees at 14k for summer term.
When they were tiny it was fine ...but fees increase and jump up as you go up a school...wages do not increase in same way, so in our case I worked 6 days a week, sometimes 7..
We ended last two years on joint salary of 190 k..
Paid out 45 k each of last two yrs..but out of taxed income

It’s going to depend on the fees isn’t it? Decent private se on dairy school in the north you’re likely to have change from £15k p.a. Decent private secondary in the south I’m paying over £25k a year.

One of the sadder threads I have read on MN was a poster whose DD was going to have to leave her school shortly before GCSEs.

The family had simply run out of money. There had been a business failure. The family had exhausted every line of credit and owed significant fees to the school which they couldn't pay.

I was made redundant and it took me a while to get back on my feet financially. Throughout that time nothing changed for DCs because they were in state school.

King Edward VI High School in Birmingham considers that you can pay full fees (£15k) for one child if you earn more than £72k as a household. It's more than £82k for two children. So I would say to be comfortable-ish at a similar priced school you want to be in the £100k plus bracket for the household. London schools are substantially more expensive, fees are often more like £20k-£22k per year, and the cost of living in London is also a lot higher.

Depends on housing costs surely because if that's low you have more for fees.

Our joint income is around 450k at the moment. But DH says still doesn't want to straddle himself with fees for two kids and would rather invest the money. It would feel like a lot to us to pay for two kids. Schools around here are around 20k per year. It's a lot.

This seems a little extreme!

Yes, this. Budget for fee increases of 5-10% per year plus jumps at certain points like yeara 3, 7 and 12 - effectively if you start from reception, the fees will have doubled by year 13.

Have a look at what the fees are in the final year, they normally increase a lot from reception to final year even before you consider inflation.

At 20 k per annum times 14 years, that's 560.000 pounds ( or thereabouts ) for two kids.

I'm rounding up a little bit, but the senior schools around here are 20k a year at the moment.

It's a hell of a lot of money that we could invest in other ways for our future. That's all he can think about. I'm on the fence.

I'm aware what privates can cost. Obviously it's your choice if the value is then or the money could be spent better elsewhere. I just don't think 40k out of a 450k income would be a struggle.

I think it is not safe to look at just salary even if you are executive level, you do not know if you will be in your current role forever. As current economic like banks collapse, high inflation and costs of living. You need to have savings or a rich family or stable business owner. Otherwise, if anything goes wrong, you may be in a difficult situation. If you want to look at just salary. I will say at least £120K for one kid, £150K for two. And you will live just ok. After-tax will not be that much to cover London secondary day schools £23-£30K. Not to mention travel, other clubs, music, parties and uniforms. It is getting harder. ,Many private schools are opening oversea schools to help the income.

As duoplik says, it's a lot of money, but you can afford it. I'd say that you can easily afford it. It's just that very wealthy people put a great deal of weight on living a very wealthy lifestyle. Perhaps you don't even think of it as a very wealthy lifestyle, as it's the norm for you. In any event, why are you talking about 14 years as though it's 14 years or nothing? Lots of people only go for private school at secondary level, or at age 13, or at 6th form.

So we’re looking for our DD. She’s in nursery now and has first refusal for prep place when needed. We’ve paid nursery outright till the day she starts prep as well as we’ve been saving whilst on Mat leave for it and had the money (rather than waiting and paying fee increase every year!)

We have combined £215k (165 and 50) and it’s doable for us. What we are doing is still putting the fees away every month even though we don’t need too and hopefully between that and stocks/our savings we can just pay for primary up front in one go.

It does help we can only have DD and can’t have any more though! If we had 2 I would have to change jobs to afford it all. I would see how you go moving the money every months and see if you notice it, that way you’ll know the impact in advance.

Our combined income is £400k (London) and we haven’t thought twice about sending our two children private. It’s all a matter of priorities.

I quoted too little on the very low-rate fixed mortgage. I would say £150K for one kid and at least £200K for two. The inflation is high. If 10% increase a year plus potential VAT coming. The scholarship will not help much...

Really interesting reading this, we have a (recent) household income of just over £100k and live in a relatively cheap area for housing but we wouldn't entertain it on this salary, lifestyle is pretty important to us and we feel pretty confident in our abilities (and income) to subsidise a state education to a standard we are happy with (as it happens we live in a catchment for an excellent top performing state school so it's not something that worries us) we'd have to be very, very unhappy with the state offering to consider the sacrifices required.

Our joint income is around 450k at the moment. But DH says still doesn't want to straddle himself with fees for two kids and would rather invest the money. It would feel like a lot to us to pay for two kids. Schools around here are around 20k per year. It's a lot.

But on this salary you could easily send two children private, live a comfortable life, AND save/invest enough money to generate ongoing generational wealth. There is nothing wrong with state on any salary, but thinking that private education is a financial stretch on this salary suggests that your DH might be having some skewed thinking and psychology around money. I'm sometimes guilty of this myself, on a much smaller scale.

Things can go wrong in the future. Life isn't wholly predictable. But if your child is in private, it's not the end of the world if you have to take them out and send them to a state school. It wouldn't be ideal, but it's not as though you're playing with a huge risk. Especially as there are a number of alternative entry and exit points. It's funny reading how people who are extremely wealthy are so timorous about life choices.

From what I have seen, the actual evidence is that small class sizes do not have any strong and consistent effect on learning, probably because even in small classes, most classroom teacher time is going to be spent on managing the whole class, meaning that reducing the number of pupils still does not result in any meaningful amount of 1:1 time for any given child (and that which they do get is likely to be poor quality - you are not going to get high-quality 1:1 individual instruction from even the best classroom teacher during a lesson, because they are simultaneously trying to keep an eye and an ear on what is going on among the rest of the students at the same time).

If parents want 1:1 help for kids, it generally makes more economic and educational sense to think about “What, specifically, does my child need 1:1 attention with?” (Examples: my child struggles in maths and needs more help/My child wants to go into sciences and needs excellent results in this area/My child is extremely talented at this sport or art and would benefit from special teaching at their level) and then pay for some tutoring or special classes in those areas.

I think a big reason for paying for private school is if your state options are actively bad or scary, esp in terms of lots of disruptive behavior, and it tends to be secondary where that issue really comes in. There is the option of paying for private school from 11-16, then going back into the state sector for A-levels, as the most disruptive kids will have left to do other things by that point.

Gross 80K here a year household, just myself. Fees are approx 3K per month for 2 children in London. I have no mortgage, no cars, very little holidays if that.

Children have been privately educated since 4. I think only worth it for the smaller class sizes plus the pastoral care. Academically my school isn't pushy so I sometimes wonder whether it's worth moving elsewhere to a more academic school. What id say is once you are in the private education system, its very hard to come out, as you just get used to it all.

We paid for one child out of monthly net income of £7,500. Helped that the mortgage was gone.

might have to do it again soon (risk of no school place) in which case we can still manage it from the same monthly net (but this time with a mortgage to pay).

if we have to send two children, that’ll be harder but the mortgage will be gone by then so we just swap one outgoing for another.

do you have a written budget? And a fee increase spreadsheet (assuming 5% increase a year)? That will make the position clear.

We considered it 10 years ago on a joint income of £125-150K 2 DCs. It would have been tight, instead we have spent the money on:
a) Tution for the 11+ from yr 4
b) Extra - curricular activities
c) This is the big one- enrichment including wonderful family holidays (America, most of Europe, Japan)

I wouldn't have made different choices unless we had had double the income.

Our LO will be starting reception next September. My husband’s salary covers day to day costs, including the mortgage. I work part-time to cover school related costs and anything I have left over goes into our school savings account. We have two years of fees already saved to ensure we always have a buffer.