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.

amother

Snapdragon

Yesterday at 10:26 am

Between me and my husband $225k. Tuition for 3 kids $36k. No scholarship. 16% of income. Leaves us paycheck to paycheck with a strict budget. School doesn't come with any frills and I know they are trying to keep their costs down but still struggling.

amother

Fern

Yesterday at 10:39 am

amother OP wrote:

1. Three kids
2. $250-ish. Yes, scholarship. Sort of. The state started a program a couple years back. Each child get's a really nice chunk given to the schools on their behalf which is supposed to lower tuition. This is only true for 2 of my kids though. One is in a school which raised to tuition when this happened so that we would still pay the same. It's also our largest tuition for a special needs school. Tuition is $55,000.
3. One person's necessities are another person's luxuries so hard to rate, but let's go with "7".
4. Yes and no. One school's tuition is more than fair. I feel my kid's get so much for what we pay. Excellent teachers, hot lunch, lots of after school/ outside of school programming, etc. The SN school is okay but for what we pay they should be bringing in much better teachers and extras.

amother

Tangerine

Yesterday at 2:33 pm

What they're asking - about 72% of our income (this is after FAFSA, and cheaper schools)
What we're paying - a little over 20% of our income (of $130k)
Tuition for 9 kids
How tight - very very
Is what the school asking fair? Yes, I was a bookkeeper in a mesivta, the asking price is fair. But it's not sustainable.

amother

Banana

Yesterday at 2:44 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?
KAH 4, 1 Homeschool
2. How much is your net income?
~90k
Scholarship?
Government scholarship total ~9k, no others
And percentage that goes to tuition?
~50%
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.
3
4. Do you feel the tuition asked of you is fair?
No. I think school tuition/yiddishe lifestyle requires a major overhaul. It's unsustainable.
If families have an average of 5 kids let's say, that's 8k starting first grade. 8*5 =40k. And as kids get older tuition increases, as well as bar/bas mitzvah and other expenses (glasses, braces, therapy, clubs, sports to give a few examples). A "good" salary in the US secular world is 80-100k. We need to make a lot more than that since tuition takes A HUGE BITE out of our paychecks and still need to afford food/rent/mortgage/clothes/ some extras. So the system needs changing desperately. I like the idea of kehilla tax, and schools having simcha rooms/wedding halls that should be the first choice to rent out when making a simcha put of the home (wedding, vort, bar mitzvah, siyum, bris...). That should defray costs somewhat.
I'm sure there are other ideas out there...

amother

Chestnut

Today at 1:08 pm

So glad we live in Israel. Not voting because I’m not the demographic you’re looking for. These are our monthly fees.

Tuition is 1300 nis a month for three children.
I pay 1500 nis a month for extracurricular activities and therapies.
School goes through the entire June and then we have school camp for 3 weeks for which we pay nothing for our youngest, 400 for our middle and 1000 for our oldest if they want to attend. Older kids can also make plans with friends and take buses around to enjoy some time off instead.
Camp is 1400 nis per child.