How to plan for private schooling

As a mum I know that parents are always trying to give their children the best possible start in life. And one of the ways that we can help our children is to ensure that they have a great education and a great school environment that’s going to bring out the best in them.

Whilst we have lots of great schooling options in Australia many parents like to consider private schooling for their children. However, putting children through private schooling can be expensive. From reception to year 12 you can be looking at $250,000 plus or for high school alone you can be looking at $140,000, so it is going to make a hole in your pocket.

If you want to be in a financial position to be able to choose a private school for your child, I’m going to share three steps on how to plan for private schooling for your children.

Step #1

Understand the costs.  First, identify which school you would love to send your children too, and put them on the wait list because sometimes they can be hard to get into at the last minute. Make sure you try to consider and decide what year level your child would be likely to start at private schooling. Of course, you can change your mind down the track, but if you can try to think of it up front that would help you in your planning.

Ring the school, get their fee schedule and understand the total costs. Once you understand the costs associated, you’re ready to move on to step two.

Step #2

Start saving as early as possible. Once you know the costs you can start working towards it. This is where consistency is the key. The best thing to do is allocate a regular amount of your income towards saving at regular intervals. So, decide how much you can afford each week or each fortnight to put away in a separate, special account that’s just for private schooling for your children.

If you think that your savings are going to fall short, I’d encourage you to reach out to family members and grandparents, aunties, and uncles, perhaps they can give birthday presents as educational gifts and contribute to their private school fund, rather than giving them disposable toys and things they’re not really going to benefit from. That’s another way that you can help to boost those private school savings.

Step #3

Save on your mortgage whilst saving for your school fees. If you do have a mortgage make sure that you set up a separate offset account that’s just reserved for private school fees and start making sure that your regular savings, that we talked about in step two, is going into this offset account.

This way, whilst you’re boosting your savings for your private schooling you are also saving interest on your mortgage, so you’re doing two things at once which is pretty cool. If you don’t have a mortgage, make sure you find a high interest earning account that is accruing interest, so the money is growing for you whilst you’re saving.

I hope these tips helped you and I’d love to hear from you as to how you’re preparing to get your children ready for private schooling and how you’re planning to fund it. Also, if you liked these tips and found them useful, share them with your family and friends.