How much do you think you have to earn to put a child/ren through private school ?

[KathyBrown]

And would you say that amount doubles with 2, triples with three etc ?

It wouldn't double/triple etc with number of children unless your income was tiny.

Would expect to pay 20k per year per child (post 13) so you just need to figure out what you need to live on on top of the fees.

Eg if you need 100k to live on, with one child you would need to earn 120k for two 140k (less if at the same school with sibling discount) so not a huge increase in income.

This has been done very recently with lots of interesting replies here

Hmmm should have put it another way. If all of your 2nd family income was going purely on school fees is that doable ? By the time you got to the third child it was all gone post tax.

Surely though the £20k would be from your net income, so if you need £100k to live on, you would have to earn an extra £33k or so to pay the school fees. Or am I wrong?

Genuinely interested in this thread for future reference

20K is a lot more than the private schools near me cost.

shit loads
be very very careful becasue once you are there you wont want to leave

lol i agree am sucked in just visiting

an expensive school out of London is 18K
then there is all the rest of the stuff
If you board - 30K

So how long is that piece of string?

I agree with the poster who said it wouldn't need to double or treble though.

Just work it out backwards. Secondary school fees here are £10k per child rising to £12k in the 6th form. So per year we need to be able to afford £20k in after tax income.

The trouble we've found with school fees is the uncertainty of our income stream. Fine if we were public servants or something - bit difficult to look into the future and think we will earn £x for the next 11 years or whatever. Makes it difficult to plan

Very difficult to answer!

Obviously depends upon where you live/ your other expenses and what type of lifestyle you want to maintain.

I can only really speak for us, but if that is helpful...

DH works f/t and earns approx £85K + bonus (last year 30%, this year 0%!), I work p/t and earn about £10K (doing a bit more soon, so £20K). We run one small car between us and have a small mortgage (£90K).

We could easily afford to pay pre-prep/prep fees for one child and maybe two, with a bit more effort. Our DC goes to state school though, as we think it is better than the local private school.

Our surplus cash goes on overpaying the mortgage. It should be paid off well before our DC goes to secondary school, so private school (which would be more expensive then) would be a comfortable option for one, or even two dc. (DC will probably go to the state school though).

TBH I would feel a bit stressed sending two children to private school on our income right from pre-prep, but I am an over cautious type!

I know a few SAHM's (casually not really friends) who have 2 or 3 children at private school and I always think (never say!) their DH's must be earning at least £150K to even begin to afford that.