Paying for private school in the DMV area

Tips and tricks for sending your child to private school for Washingtonians

Category: Current Events (page 1 of 2)

The Battlewagon

A few years ago we reported the money saving technique of buying vehicles that are out of style (One day only special! Half-priced cars!).

When we purchased the battlewagon with row boat like styling it was certainly out of style. And, at that time, reliability was the name of the game. Top of reliable heap cars were expensive used and new. Yet pretty reliable cars were being sold for a substantial discount.

An Update

So how did it work out for us all these years later. Fine. No major repairs or problems as of yet and it keeps on rolling. It has hauled tons of stuff (literally) without complaint. The years have rolled by too. The battle wagon is now on it’s 15th year of problem free operation.

What is out of style today?

In our last update electric cars were really out of fashion and could be had for a song. Times have changed. Now it is giant truck things with orbiting moons and electric model cars of awesomeness are all the rage.

Sedans and, battle wagons and now mid sized gas powered SUV’s and mini-vans are out of vogue. Used ones may be a good starting point if you need a new ride.

The Best Car

The best car is often the one you already have – but if not – take a look in the unloved areas of the market for safe and reliable transportation.

If you combine a reasonable purchase price with other cost saving measures (e.g. That is One Long Cable!) the savings can be redirect to tuition payments.

Five things I learned from reading “A Journal of the Plague Year” that might apply to the novel coronavirus.

We usually keep the frugal holiday gift giving approach of four gifts per person: something you need, something to read, something to eat and something you want.

For my “something to read” item I usually request some book to totally geek out on. One year, I requested, received and thoroughly enjoyed a book called Salt: A world history.

A Journal of the Plague Year

About three years ago I asked for and received a book by Daniel Defoe (better known for his book “Robin Crusoe”)  called “A Journal of the Plaque Year”.  Defoe was born in 1660 in England and his book is written in the dialect of that era.  Because of the old English writing style, it was a slow read and I just finished the small book this past fall. 

Defoe, a journalist, wrote this book in 1722 a full two hundred years before antibiotics were invented. He had access to the stories of those who experienced The Great Plaque of London[1] in 1665-1666, facts in figures in the public record and his own observations of the 1720-1721 Great Plague of Marseille[2]. He admittedly took creative liberties writing the book to write in the first person style that made him famous (and paid) during that time. 

And while I am not comparing Coronavirus to the horror of the middle age plagues where many people  “ate lunch with their friends and dinner with their ancestors in paradise.” there may be some broad generalizations that are similar in terms of behaviors. 

Five Take Aways

Specifically, five observations stood out from his telling. Hopefully none of them come to pass during our current novel coronavirus pandemic of 2020. Here is my list: 

  1. Londoners generally thought it was the bad air because summer was worse. 
  2. People generally ignored the threat when it was in another borough or even one street over. They only adjusted their behaviors when illness reached their street. 
  3. Constables would bar the ill from leaving their homes.
  4. When the illness rates dropped down, the population would return back to normal patterns or return to town, sparking second waves of transmission.
  5. Social norms and property rights became much more lax than before the plague. Example: “Minister did Visit the Sick at first and for a little while, but it was not to be done”[3]

I found these take aways helpful when I first heard the news of a possible pandemic and it caused us to stay home sooner than many to protect the more vulnerable members of our population.

Be well. 


[1] “Great Plague of London.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, March 16, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plague_of_London.

[2] “Great Plague of Marseille.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, March 21, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plague_of_Marseille.

[3] Defoe, Daniel, and David J. Johnson. A Journal of the Plague Year. London: Penguin Classics London: , 2003, (First published in 1722)

Should I Raid My 529 to Pay for Private Elementary School?

About 529 Plans

 A 529 plan “is a tax-advantaged savings plan designed to encourage saving for future college costs.” [1]

New Tax Law Expands 529 Use

The recent tax overhaul bill expands parents funding options to pay for private elementary and high school tuition.

Specifically, the new bill enables one to dip into a 529 plan to pay for any private school [1] – not just colleges. For example, if you have a large stash of cash in a 529 saved for college but the realities are that your youngster is struggling at school  this might be worth exploring. After all, if college is at risk because of present challenges a private school might be able to help.

Should I Raid My 529?

Raiding college savings funds to pay for lower school tuition isn’t something to be done lightly. However, it is an option now and one being worth aware of if you are considering private school for your child.

Before doing so it is worth stepping back and considering three things.

  1.  First, carefully monitor and learn about your expenses for a month. Observe your actual expenses not what you think they should be in the future. Can you still save for college or pay for some colleges based on your current situation or with some viable adjustments? And what will happen if the tax law changes again in a few year? Will you still be able to pay?
  2.  Second, with our kids it is easy to panic. Get rationale. Can some less drastic changes at school or at home help with the issues? Are charter schools or other public schools (yes, you have to move) an option? What is the full spectrum of options – and which qualify as good enough?
  3.  And finally, after the the rational exploration in steps one and two (and some meditation), follow your heart. Specifically, what do think you  wish you had did 20 years from now?  Do that and make it work by being the grown up.

If your family determines that private school is for you and you are going to raid the 529 plans to make it happen, immediately become a reader of this blog (paying-for-private-school.com) and the many other excellent financial management blogs out there. We can help.

References

  1. “An Introduction to 529 Plans.” SEC Emblem. December 04, 2017. Accessed December 30, 2017. https://www.sec.gov/reportspubs/investor-publications/investorpubsintro529htm.html.
  2.  Hobbs, Tawnell D. “Losing Students, Private Schools Try to Change.” The Wall Street Journal. December 29, 2017. Accessed December 30, 2017. https://www.wsj.com/articles/losing-students-private-schools-try-to-change-1514557437.

Adjusting your Amazon Echo’s Time for daylight savings November 5th, 2017

We are fan(atics) for Amazon’s Echo technology. It is a low cost way to replace radios, clocks and ipods with a single device.

The Echo Didn’t Adjust For Day Light Savings

However, this morning (November 5th,  2017), our Echo dot did not automatically adjust to daylight savings. Alarms went off an hour late and there was a stern set of inquiries asked of Alexa, including the all  important “Alexa, what are the laws of robotics? ”

After much searching for a solution we started  fidgeting  with the thing and found that going to the Alexa application and switching the time zone to Amazon time adjusted the device time to match  the correct Eastern Standard Time. This shouldn’t work (as Amazon Time should be Pacific Time since they are based in Seattle) but it did. Until the bug is fixed on the server side this is a work around for our fellow east coast folks.

How To Fix It

To try this on your Amazon Echo dot,follow these steps:

  1. Start the Alexa Application on your tablet or computer
  2. Navigate to the Home->Settings area.
  3. Find the list devices of devices section.
  4. Select the device you want to modify and click on it or tap it.
  5. Find the section under General called Device Time Zone area.
  6. Use the menus to select US  and Eastern Standard Time for the time zone combinations.
  7. Wait 30 seconds
  8. Test it buying  ask the device the time.  Confirm the time is correct and matches the day light savings time.

The America and Eastern Standard Time zone combination is the one that doesn’t work. If that fails for you the American and Amazon zone also gave me the correct time.

And yup, you will have to do this again even if you corrected it in March during the last day light savings change over.

 

Recommendations on better ways to do this are encouraged and welcomed in the comments.

Adjusting your Amazon Echo’s Time for daylight savings March 12, 2017

We are fan(atics) for Amazon’s Echo technology. It is a low cost way to replace radios, clocks and ipods with a single device.

However, this morning (March 12th 2017), our Echo dot did not automatically adjust to daylight savings. Alarms went off an hour late and there was a stern set of inquiries asked of Alexa, including the all  important “Alexa, what are the laws of robotics? ”

After much searching for a solution we started  fidgeting  with the thing and found that going to the Alexa application and switching the time zone to Amazon time adjusted the device time to match  the correct Eastern Standard Time. This shouldn’t work (as Amazon Time should be Pacific Time since they are based in Seattle) but it did. Until the bug is fixed on the server side this is a work around for our fellow east coast folks.

To try this on your Amazon Echo dot,follow these steps:

  1. Start the Alexa Application on your tablet or computer
  2. Navigate to the Home->Settings area.
  3. Find the list devices of devices section.
  4. Select the device you want to modify and click on it or tap it.
  5. Find the section under General called Device Time Zone area.
  6. Use the menus to select US  and Eastern Standard Time for the time zone combinations.
  7. Wait 30 seconds
  8. Test it buying  ask the device the time.  Confirm the time is correct and matches the day light savings time.

The America and Eastern Standard Time zone combination is the one that doesn’t work. If that fails for you the American and Amazon zone also gave me the correct time.

Perhaps a bug fix will come out in a few days. Recommendations on better ways to do this are encouraged and welcomed in the comments.

 

A new education secretary

In November of 2016, the incoming administration appointed Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary and today she started her nomination hearings. What does her nomination mean for the education system?

Betsy is chair of Amercian Federation for Children, a group advocating for school choice for parents and students through the use of charter schools.

They claim the following:

  • Every 26 seconds a child drops out of a public school in America
  • In many of our nation’s largest cities dropout rates exceed 50%
  • America is lagging behind more than a dozen other nations in math and literacy.[1]

These are astounding numbers.

Old School House Sign - Source: Wiki Commons

Old School House Sign – Source: Wiki Commons

Their proposed solution is to introduce choice via charter schools and her appointment is a clear support of that philosophy in the public education system.

I have no idea if a voucher approach will work but I suspect (acknowledging I am the least qualified person in the world to talk about this) that a sudden switch to a voucher approach will leave areas where no education options are available.

The result would be similar to food deserts. These have occurred in cities with big box grocers understandably focusing on higher income areas. The under served areas are left with few if little options and lose access to fresh produce.

I hope a new national approach results in improved academic achievement for all students but urge caution.

Slow and careful changes with an exploratory approach  may make sense here. For example, can the power of the internet remove geographic barriers to educational access? How can they assure that there isn’t a generational gap for specialty programs such as special needs programs, programs focused on the arts, STEM and vocational studies while they experiment approaches?

We will watch this closely from the lens that every child deserves to use their time in school to have the opportunity to grow to their full potential and be an active part of the broader community.

[1] http://afcgrowthfund.org/school-choice-facts/

The Granny Smith cash multiplier method

There is a very subtle multiplier effect which is essentially a tax free income booster that can help you pay for a private school tuition. Here is how it works.

In November my wife was looking for a tree to plant on our very (very) small yard as a screen for a nearby street. The tree had to be fairly small given the constraints of said small yard.

She happened upon one that was ascetically pleasing with a maximum height and width of 30 feet by 30 feet. Measured from the location of where we would place it with a yard stick (it’s a small yard) at full size the tree will expand 15 feet each way. Perfect!

Method Tip 1: Avoid having to earn as much income on the purchase by purchasing a lower cost item.

The ten foot tall tree, while ideal in form and habit, was half bereft of leaves with a bit of a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree look going on. The tree was originally $120 but was marked down to $30. A sale!

Enter step one of the multiplier effect. She saved $90 dollars on the original purchase.

US Currency - Source Wiki Commons

US Currency – Source Wiki Commons

That saved amount removed the need to earn that extra $90. Let’s assume a 40% cumulative, federal, state, sales taxes and mystery fees on the income. That extra $90 would have cost $126 in earned income to cover. Whew!

To restate- that is $126 in earnings we didn’t have to make to actually end up with the $90 extra we would have needed for the full price of the tree.

Method Tip 2: When making a purchase, have it solve multiple problems at once.

My mother told me that her grandmother had a purpose for every plant around the farmhouse, in addition to looking nice.

In our case we were looking for a small tree that provides a summer screen from the nearby street but still looks good and drops leaves in the winter for additional sunlight in the colder months. This works for both screening and sound attenuation in the winter as it is quite dense with branches.

What else could it do for us?

In our case the tree selected is a Granny Smith apple tree! It should produce about $20 bucks of

caption2

By No machine-readable author provided. Fievet assumed (based on copyright claims). – No machine-readable source provided. Own work assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public Domain, Link

organic apples every year (ok, more like $50 but I want to be conservative here to make a point).

And we placed it on the west side of the house to shade (and cool the air) going into the AC and near the house.

What about having to pick the extra apples that we won’t eat, giving bags of them to neighbors, family, coworkers and the local food pantry and then still having to pick busted ones off the ground? What a hassle right? Sure, but we have arranged our lives such that we get regular physical activity with this sort of money saving effort all year long. Annual gym memberships were cancelled long ago but we will only count the month of apple picking and leaf raking mayhem here for another $50 saved.

And for the grand finale, our nearby park has crab apple trees. These can be used to cross pollinate Granny Smith apple trees (they self-pollinate but word in the fields is that a nearby pollinator will help with yields). That is a second $30 tree we didn’t have to buy (nor had space for) because we selected a compatible tree for our neighborhood.

Total economic impact

The first year we saved $90 on the tree and $30 on a second tree we didn’t need to purchase. The tree (fairly big already) should produce apples about three years hence and provide the shade to assist with house cooling.

Lets look at the numbers using the Granny Smith multiplier method.

Year 1: $120 saved

Year 3 on: $50 saved on gym membership, $20 on apple costs and $5 on AC costs for an annual savings of $75.

Ten year economic output: $645

And remember this is all tax free after the initial $30 we spent. That is a money tree that offers $60+ annually in savings, builds community as we gift organic apples, screens the street and provides a beautiful tree to look at. Plus it is pretty cool to have an apple tree.

Let’s assume my conservative numbers are *still* too high and it only saves us half that, or $30 a month.

Fine. An investment with a yield will take a hit of 15% on the income so I would need $34.5 in monthly income ($414 annually) to produce that same value.

A typical safe stocks yield 3%. We would need a stock portfolio with a market value of $13,800 to produce that same income. And to purchase that stock we would have had to earn $20,010 in gross income to purchase that investment.

Oh, and the yield on the Granny Smith Apple Tree is $30 a year or 100% of its original purchase price, annually.

We just trounced the stock market and avoided having to earn an additional $20,000. Thanks Granny Smith!

Don’t overdo it

The multi-purpose mindset does have its limits. Spending an extra $10,000 on a fancy pick-em-up-truck because you might need to haul a jumbo pack of toilet paper someday is just a slow way to lose money. Just think about it first and run the numbers is all I am saying.

Get into the multi-purpose mindset. You can do this.

Breaking news – the faucet is fixed!

Breaking news in our house – the 25 year old leaking bathroom faucet has been replaced!

I know, huge!

Why is this breaking news? I am glad you asked!  The news is that we saved money in two places – the $5 on the Amazon Prime movie rental we were going to watch instead of fixing the sink as well as on the labor to install the replacement faucet.

To get this double benefit we followed the instructions (repeatedly) and after extreme highs (it works!) and equally bad lows (nope, the new connections leak) we got stuff disconnected and the new stuff reconnected. There are only three connection points – hot water, cold water and the drain but I assure you for a novice like me it was a slow and laborious process.   Let talk benefits in order to convince you to consider in sourcing  before hiring someone.

First, we changed from passive consumers to active producers (and I use that term loosely). From observers to doers. This mind shift is more important that the actual money saved.

Though we did save a chunk of change. According to HomeWyse.com, this would have normally cost us $331 in labor for an expert. And to earn that we would have had to earn $479 in income to pay for it (not to mention asking someone to work a holiday weekend).

$300 bucks might not seem like a lot but ten of these $300 do-it-yourself gigs adds up to $3000. Combined with other habits this can help out with the tuition bills.

Of course safety is paramount and we double and triple checked to make sure the circuit breaker was off and that the dishwasher was off before we did anything else. Start small with something simple that you are comfortable with but would normally hire out to someone else.

Black Friday! Act now! Don’t miss the holidays!

 

Today is Black Friday. One can save thousands by acting fast!  One day sales only! Act now! Quick! Save hundreds by spending thousands. Sure, your cash balance

caption2

By Powhusku from Laramie, WY, USA – Black Friday, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link

will drop and credit card balance will rise but hey, look at all the new fancy stuff you didn’t even know you needed!

Resist.

Slow down.

Get out of line. Empty your online cart.

That stuff will still be there next week. And the week after that. And without time pressure you can buy fewer items and spend less money overall.

How about this instead? Consider just 4 items for each child for the holidays.

  • Something they want
  • Something they need
  • Something to wear
  • Something to read

Give them the benefits of a frugal Christmas. This in turn may allow for higher quality items to be purchased while creating less waste.

Expect complaints. And comparisons to what other kids received. Be ok with that. Instead, you are giving your kids a great education and the tools, later in life, to buy stacks of material goods if they so choose.

 

Washington D. C. Charter school rankings released for 2016

Last month the Washington Post reported that D.C. has more high-performing charter schools than ever.

A benefit of private schools is the ability to select a school that matches your child’s needs and your value system and for the school to do the same. And a charter system is an excellent alternative to fee based private school. It has many of the advantages; open competition, selection

Old School House Sign - Source: Wiki Commons

Old School House Sign – Source: Wiki Commons

and flexibility for the teachers and administrators.

If you find you can’t afford a private school consider getting in the lottery for a charter school education instead.

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