By G. Ruga, Editor, Paying for Private School: Tips and tricks for sending your child to private school
Time Magazine reports that private school can save you money by giving you home location flexibility. This in turn can save you $50,000. They are right! Indeed, you can save even *more* money if you take the right steps after moving in.
Small is Beautiful
We live in an OK but not great public school district. As is typically the case for such school districts, the homes are older and smaller. Our smaller home costs less to heat and cool. And it costs a lot less to repair. There are less materials needed and they often cost less to replace. Don’t be scared into buying or renting a brand new place to avoid costs – over time the smaller home will come out way ahead in many ways.
As one of many examples, our current roof cost $3000 to replace back in 2010. For larger homes a roof replacement can be $8,000 to replace with just basic materials. And larger homes are often fancier requiring you to get better materials to fit in. And this leads to the next benefit – keep up with the neighborhood expectations.
Less Pressure To Spend
Keeping up with the Jones is a lot different in our neighborhood. Folks are lot more down to earth. Literally. Hiring a lawn service is considered either 1) a mark of shame or 2) you must be ill and we should step in to help.
People who move here and hire a lawn service seem to eventually shift to mowing it themselves. Every Saturday morning they see countless examples of how do get it done. And the entire street is a tool sharing enterprise. Having auto mechanics and DYI folks as neighbors really helps as well. A a lower cost neighborhood is lower cost on many levels and with more down-home kind of folks we prefer.
The Up Side – More Earnings
And private school raises the odds of your kiddo going to college. You will be used to saving lots of money and shelling out tuition expenses anyway so you are more likely to be set up to pay for it. And that equates to a million an extra income over their career(typically). Start to think across the generations and it starts to get impressive.
And while money isn’t the main driver for a private school it is worth noting that you save a lot more than $53,000 when moving to a lower cost neighborhood and paying for private school.
And lower costs houses are smaller, older and closer to area of employment. Your car costs will go down and with that shorter commute you will be more rested and eventually promoted.
You will save $53,000 on housing expenses and realize $1 million in extra income for each child. That is not a bad deal for providing your children an education that matches your values.