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Tuition Assistance

February 12th, 2015 at 11:44 pm

When F started private school I did a spreadsheet (ha! of course!) that showed money inflowing and outflowing for tuition all the way to 12th grade. I used the amount of actual tuition, not including tuition assistance, plus an increase each year.

We've been really fortunate to receive tuition assistance each year, and I think we'll get something this year as well. But I just spoke to the school's finance guy and he said that the place that analyzes our financial situation said that the parent contribution should be more this year.

I'm not sure if this is partly because of the fact that I have to take health insurance as income, which makes it look like our income is higher. And because the cost for health insurance was higher this year it looked like I had a bigger income. I talked to him about this, so we'll see. This year, our health insurance costs have gone up even more, so next year will be worse.

D did get a raise this year, but it was eaten up mostly with taxes and cost of living increases. It was about a 1% raise. He now makes $45k.

According to my spreadsheet, if we don't get tuition assistance, our tuition savings will be depleted when F starts 7th grade. This includes money in and out, and continued savings. It could be worse... we will own our house (if all goes as planned) by the end of 7th grade. So if we can cover those 9 months or so we can use the money we've been paying to the mortgage to cover tuition.

I am starting to think that due to the terrible school system here (it's statewide) this is a pretty expensive place to live.

F loves the school, and we love the school, and we'll do what we have to do to make this work. I'm still worried and need to sit down with our budget and see where we can make adjustments. I don't want to mess with savings, but we may have to.

Posted in Not-so-Frugal Education | 4 Comments »

4 Responses to “Tuition Assistance ”

  1. chloe Says:
    February 13th, 2015 at 01:51 am 1423792288
    1423792288

    It's great that you're tracking it, though, so there won't be any surprises and you can try to deal with it early. What grade is F in now? Hopefully they will consider the insurance situation, if that was the problem. Otherwise, maybe it was a school-wise decision to ask for more financial support from all of the parents?

  2. FrugalTexan75 Says:
    February 13th, 2015 at 02:10 am 1423793442
    1423793442

    I hope they take your insurance costs into consideration.

  3. Buendia Says:
    February 13th, 2015 at 02:48 am 1423795736
    1423795736

    I hope they do, too! But if they don't, we'll be ok. I can revise the budget a little, sell a few things on ebay or craigslist, etc. We will get by! We're not that bad off, and we have a good life. Tuition is high, but they don't nickel and dime on other things; tuition covers everything. You know what one of our biggest expenses is? Piano! I can't believe how much we pay, but it's the going rate around here (about $1800 per year!). I am going to ask the piano teacher about going to every other week next year.

  4. snafu Says:
    February 13th, 2015 at 03:05 am 1423796742
    1423796742

    I don't think anyone considers that pay raises nearly disappear in taxes and cost of living increases, they merely look at gross income figures when deciding required contributions. When VCRs were popular, there were a lot of piano/music lessons-on-tape available. I wonder if they are now on You Tube or DVDs ? That would be especially helpful for DD who now understands the basics and to supplement lessons. Some music schools have group/class lesson in our community but maybe for very young or more advanced musicians.

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