What percentage do you pay to tuition bill?

amother

OP ↓

Thu, Oct 10 2024, 12:10 pm

What percentage of your NET income (post tax) do you pay to tuition?

In posts please include:
1. How many kids are you paying tuition for?
2. How much is your net income? Scholarship? And percentage that goes to tuition?
3. How tight do you feel financially on a scale of 1-can hardly afford basic necessities, to 10-comfortable with leftovers for savings and luxuries.
4. Do you feel the tuition asked of you is fair?

amother

Leaf

Thu, Oct 10 2024, 12:21 pm

I'm very similar to you OP.
Making 98k.
Paying 33k tuition for 5 kids.
So around 36%.
Getting scholarships. Full tuition would be 60k plus fees.

Im feeling incredibly tight and strapped.

I don't feel like the question is whether it's fair or not, but rather whether it's sustainable. And it's not.

amother

Chocolate

Thu, Oct 10 2024, 12:25 pm

I really don't want to answer because I know what the comments are going to be...
But here goes.

Net income: abt 625k
Kids IN SCHOOL (not babysitting etc): 4
No scholarships
If you just count the tuition we pay, it's abt 5% of our income. About 32k. This is Lakewood...full tuition in most of my kids school is about 7K.

However, if you include additional donations to the schools, it jumps to 15% of net as we give a lot more in donations.

ETA the answer to the fourth question: no I actually don't think that the tuition they ask is fair especially after reading the articles and hearing schools say that when they charge you full tuition, that's not even the cost of your kid.
Put an option on the tuition form saying,
-full tuition 7k, check here to pay $7,000 per month.
- cost to educate your child, 12,000, check here to pay $1,200 a month.

Yes, it happens to be that we are paying for way more than the cost of our child, with donations. But if people are able to pay more, there should be an easy way for them to choose to pay the actual cost of education for their kids because I like to believe that most people want to do what's right.

amother

↑ OP

Thu, Oct 10 2024, 12:31 pm

amother Chocolate wrote:

I actually appreciate hearing from people in diff circumstances. Thanks for answering. Hashem should continue to bench you with parnassa

amother

Birch

Thu, Oct 10 2024, 2:01 pm

Combined take home salary is about 186k.

Tuition is complicated. We pay full tuition for 4 kids but 2 include room and board in yeshiva. For one more kid in Beis medresh they don't charge tuition but tell you the cost of each boy per month and request donations. In addition they don't provide room, so we have to pay rent and utilities in a shared apartment. We pay almost the full amount they mentioned, but not 100%.

So we are paying about $72,600 for all 5 of my kids (plus room and utilities for one) but $61,810 for the 4 that have required tuition (and fees). This is about 37.75% of our post tax salary for all 5.

When we were on one income and not making nearly the same we approached the schools and felt they were very understanding and fair in the breaks they gave. We did not ask for a break this year. We told the schools we would like to try to pay full tuition, but if we can't we'd let them know.

We are making ends meet, but catching up from debt we accrued when my husband was unemployed for months. We are slowly paying off the debt. For day to day expenses we can afford what need and a little bit for extras. (Maybe once we pay off the rest of the debt we will have a bit more wiggle room.)

amother

Pumpkin

Thu, Oct 10 2024, 2:11 pm

amother Chocolate wrote:

My school does this. They give you the cost to educate the child, the price they ask of you, and then if you want to apply for a scholarship that's extra.

I really appreciate it. And even though we pay so much it makes me want to help fundraise more.