Paying for private school in the DMV area

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

Tag: do it yourself

If you take the advice in this post your tuition will be both easy to pay and a joy

We often talk about education choice and the financial aspect of paying for tuition year after year. What underlies this – and is critical to understand – is the mind set behind it all. Without you will be in a constant struggle and live a life of deprivation. With it an easy path of increasing quality of life and financial security awaits.

 

Confessions of a Former Purse Addict

FireCracker is Canada’s youngest retiree shared a perspective on consumption versus building that absolutely nails the mind set you need to both be happy *and*  free up cash for other purposes. Ours is tuition and her is early retirement.  Read her Confessions of a Former Purse Addict and prepare to change your mind and your future.

Control your dope..

In it you will find a detailed biological description of the addiction of consumption and the alternative cure. Read what she says about Dopamine. And then read it twice. And then read it again.

Understanding and breaking this  cycle is the the equivalent of winning the lottery. And unlike lottery winners you will actually be happy and the pay outs never stop.

Join Us

You are now a member of those that produce and make. Welcome to the club. I can’t wait to see what you create, make, do and become.

“…consuming gives you easy highs, but creating gives you BETTER highs. Highs that last forever. – Firecracker, September, 2017

Automated savings magic

About five years ago our household switched from a regular phone line to an Ooma voice over IP device. Since we already had internet access there would be no additional monthly cost to have a land line in all the wall ports. Admittedly these days we tend to use cell phones but it is nice to have a home line and not very expensive. We spent the $149 on the ooma purchase already so it’s a sunk cost.

Oooma phone device

Our payment information changed so I dutifully logged in to update the records. I was pleasantly surprised that Oooma had been keeping track of all the savings we made with that one time switch and had it prominently displayed on the initial splash page. So far we have saved $2211 on phone bills with this original $149 purchase. A few years ago Ooma added a nominal and growing monthly fee of $3 which has since grown to $7.26 a month for 911 service and some mystery taxes. Lets assume it was 7.25 a month for the lat 5 years or $435 bucks. That is still a savings of $1775 over the five year period. Based on that initial $149 outlay that is a tax free 64% annual return which handily beats the stock market.

This simple move – which we can probably improve on – contributed substantial savings without any further effort. Automated savings can really add up over time.  Even one change can make a difference.

Some examples might include turning down the heat at night, and during the dayskipping a vacation 

or visit a library instead of buying a bunch of books and videos.

 

What can you do in your household?

Ooma Savings

Be Your Own General Store

Want to save money for tuition? One way to do so is to be like your grandmother and be your own general store and service center.

Make your Own Mixes

For example,  you can make your own bleach based cleaning spray with bleach, water and laundry detergent. We did it this morning and instructions are available online. You can do it too. Just be sure to use a laundry detergent for the soap portion of it so you don’t create a toxic cloud.

The mix is 1 to 10 of bleach to water. Here is the mix we prepared this morning:

  • 3 ounces of bleach
  • 1 teaspoon of power laundry detergent
  • Top of the 32 ounce spray clean bottle we already had
Bleach bottles

Bleach Bottles by WolfmannOwn work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

This is 2 cents a bottle as opposed to $4.99 a bottle in the store.

I saved almost $5 bucks?

Or did I? Let’s check the math.

 

 

 

 

Amount Saved = $5

Put That Creation To Use!

I immediately put this spray to use in a clean wipe of and disinfection of the bathroom surfaces. The total process took less than 20 minutes.

Less is More

And acting as your own general store is a real quality of life booster. All we need is bleach, laundry detergent and water and one spray bottle. There is no reason to visit a big box store to stock up on sprays and fill our stuff our closet with various cleaning solutions. Time saved. Plus our frugal house is also less cluttered which lowers the stress levels.

Indeed, if you have those basic ingredients on hand it’s faster and cheaper to do it yourself than calling a cleaning services and then having to do your own this-place-is-a-mess pre-cleaning before paying for $40 professional cleaning service.

Amount Saved =$45

This in turn means I won’t suck down an entire $5 pint of ice cream in a stress induced fit. Instead I will get some gentle exercise and sense of control by being able to do this myself.

Amount Saved = $50

That combination of gentle exercise, avoiding the stress (and ice cream) and having a sense of control will delay a cardiovascular event by a few years, at least, the way I see it. And that is another $20,000 not spent on rehabilitation.

Amount Saved =$20,050

The Benefits Combine and Compound

Ok that health scare bit was a bit tongue and cheek. The point here is that doing stuff your self has benefits beyond the few dollars saved for tuition expenses. Being frugal won’t delay health issues. Or will it?

What isn’t intuitive at first and what I want you to learn is how the benefits compound beyond a few extra bucks.

Some basic home chemistry very well might increase your physical, mental and financial well-being. At the very least it will save you $5 bucks and result in clean bathrooms.

The Way to Wealth is Through Saw Dust

Problem: You need more storage

We needed more storage in the living room for stuff that had been piling up on the floor.  Ikea offers a number of credenzas but the size we wanted was about $500, before taxes. And I wanted something made of solid wood since we would be looking at it a lot and I find they are much easier to repair.

Solution: Used furniture 

Craiglist to the rescue! After many weeks of checking we found  a Modern Skovby Danish Teak piece.  Apparently these are normally thousands of dollars new and approaching $1000 used.   The one near us was being unloaded for $200.

There was a catch -the owner noted it was being sold for such a low price because it had some bad water stains.

No problem. I read that one could often iron them right out! This thing would be as good as new in no time!

Water Stain City

My buddies and I went and picked it up.

Woah.

It had a lot of water stains. Some over a foot long. And blue paint. And dents and nicks and scratches galore. Luckily, I had planned for such a possibility and bought it with plan b in mind – sand blast it!

Danish Oil To the Rescue

This summer I picked up a $40 palm sander to learn how to use a palm sander and to refinish the back patio table which was weathered.

I  put on a breathing mask and went to town on this thing – lightly sanding and buffing this thing to get the old finish, water stains and paint off. Some areas required extra attention because of what appear to be teeth marks from dogs. Woof!

The starting point was dusty, dark and deeply stained furniture

The Progression

Here is a photo of one (of many) water stain on the bottom left corner.

Photo of one (of many) water stain

Photo of one (of many) water stain

Here it is after a light sanding.

 

Lightly sanded

Lightly sanded

 

And the restored surface after refinishing it.

 Tried and True Danish Oil to the Rescue.

Tried and True Danish Oil to the Rescue.

 

Please be aware that Danish Oil left in the open will light on fire with no sparks at all through a rapid oxidation process. This will start a major fire. Always put your used rags and brushes in water immediately after use.

Costs

And here is the same model, in rosewood instead of teak, for $2800. And the teak ones go for about $1000 although I found a good one for $685 before shipping costs. Again, these are used prices for these functional works of art.

The Way to Wealth is Through Saw Dust

When it was all said and done we have a refinished side board for about $300. Depending on how you count it we either saved $200 (compared to Ikea) or $1800 (for a comparable product) or more likely somewhere in between. Importantly we learned a new skill (the entire family pitched) in and had a lot of fun. And it was cheap enough if it didn’t work out it wasn’t a big deal. We could get two for the cost of a new economy item.

Of course you can do much better than this by getting low end furniture used. But this point is that one way to pay tuition expenses is through a cloud of saw dust. And this is of course, an analogy for actual hands on work.

Better put an UGG on it

Consider UGG boots for the family as one of your four holiday gifts  (something to need, want, read and wear). They will be appreciated (or will be soon enough) and yield dividends.

Fight the cold

Winter floors can get really cold. Putting on socks – or even house shoes – is too much of a hassle. Cold feet lead to the heat creeping up. UGGs are slip on house boots that have wool in them. They keep your feat toasty warm. Wearing them on even a mild day can be uncomfortable because they are the perfect winter house shoe.

Be an environmentalist *and* save money

Don’t turn up the heat up to walk around the house. Put an UGG on it! We keep our house at 62 degrees Fahrenheit (16 Celsius) in the winter and everyone has a pair of UGGs.

With a onetime investment you are able to keep the heat down for years. This in turn enables us to increase our available cash for tuition payments.

Combined with a down blanket we lowered our heat from 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 Celsius) at night to 62 degrees (16 Celsius) with no loss in comfort. Saving 3% on our bill for every degree we lower our heat means we dropped our bill by about thirty percent. And this applies for every month of the winter. Every year. On a $200 heating bill (it’s cold where we live) that is $60 bucks each month that can be sent to the school to pay for tuition. And it reduces are carbon emissions.

Keep going!

Your job is to find five of these kinds of savings. And then, once you have that done try to find more. To start off, turn down the heat and put an UGG on it.

Hard work and self-restraint

Paying for a private school is really challenging. And while there are many mental frameworks that help one in particular is required as the basis for the rest; industry and frugality. That is a fancy phrase for the combination of hard work and self-restraint.

This is not a new concept. Benjamin Franklin wrote the following Advice to a Young Tradesman on July 21st, 1748;

“It depends chiefly on two Words, Industry and Frugality; i.e. Waste neither Time nor Money, but make the best Use of both.”4

I urge you to read the full text. What isn’t often stated is how satisfying it is to get stuff done. Checking stuff off the list! Saving tens and sometimes hundreds of dollars in the process! And redirecting those dollars to someone else’s benefit.  “Work is love made visible“. ― Kahlil Gibran

It is ok to not be the best

I am probably the least handy person on the planet. To pay the tuition we regularly apply both industry and frugality.  It started with raking the leaves instead of paying someone to do it. And, slowly, ever so slowly, and with the help of lots of YouTube videos, we added more stuff to the we-do-that list. Last year, I carefully replaced the bathroom faucet. And someone heard I was doing the work myself.

caption2

By JanekpfeiferOwn work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

They were quite impressed. My chest puffed out a little further (for about a minute) and it occurred to me it is kind of fun being able to get stuff done. It is even more fun to understand how something was installed so when a problem invariable occurs you can usually understand what is going on and when to call for help – and when to simply tighten a bolt.

There is dignity in work

It is very easy to be a consumer. To wait in lines for stuff and services. To pay for private school (or home school) you are going to have to change you mindset from consumer to producer. It is quite satisfying. I have repeatedly noticed that the few wealthy people I know tend to like to do stuff themselves. It is not for the money. There is dignity in work. Do stuff yourself, however small, instead of standing around watching others do it for you. It’s a lot more fun (well, when you are done) even if you have to do the same job three times in a row to get it right.

Read the Money Mustache article introducing and explaining the Consumer Habit Loop versus The Mustachian Habit Loop. And then read it again. It will take a while to sink in but it a key framework in enabling you to pay for your children education while simultaneously enjoying a more satisfying life.

Roll up your sleeves. Get your hands dirty*.

You can do this.

 

 

*Not really. I go through about 100 Raven Nitrile Power Free Gloves every six months. They enable me to do jobs that normally I would resist from the gross factor alone (this includes all cleaning, car and plumbing work).

 

 

Sending your kid to private school will save you $1,053,000

Time Magazine reports that private school can save you money by giving you home location flexibility. This in turn can save you $50,000. They are right! Indeed, you can save even *more* money if you take the right steps after moving in.

Small is Beautiful

We live in an OK but not great public school district.  As is typically the case for such school districts, the homes are older and smaller.  Our smaller home costs less to heat and cool. And it costs a lot less to repair. There are less materials needed and they often cost less to replace. Don’t be scared into buying  or renting a brand new place to avoid costs – over time the smaller home will come out way ahead in many ways.

As one of many examples, our current roof cost $3000 to replace back in 2010. For larger homes a roof replacement can be $8,000   to replace with just basic materials. And larger homes are often fancier requiring you to get better materials to fit in. And this leads to the next benefit – keep up with the neighborhood expectations.

Less Pressure To Spend

Keeping up with the Jones is a lot different in our neighborhood. Folks are lot more down to earth. Literally. Hiring a lawn service is considered either 1) a mark of shame or 2) you must be ill and we should step in to help.

People who move here and hire a lawn service seem to eventually shift to mowing it themselves. Every Saturday morning they see countless examples of how do get it done. And the entire street is a tool sharing enterprise. Having auto mechanics and DYI folks as neighbors really helps as well. A a lower cost neighborhood is lower cost on many levels and with more down-home kind of folks we prefer.

The Up Side – More Earnings

And private school raises the odds of your kiddo going to college. You will be used to saving lots of money and shelling out tuition expenses anyway so you are more likely to be set up to pay for it. And that equates to a million an extra income over their career (typically). Start to think across the generations and it starts to get impressive.

And while money isn’t the main driver for a private school it is worth noting that you save a lot more than $53,000 when moving to a lower cost neighborhood and paying for private school.

And lower costs houses are smaller, older and closer to area of employment. Your car costs will go down and with that shorter commute you will be more rested and eventually promoted.

You will save $53,000 on housing expenses and realize $1 million in extra income for each child. That is not a bad deal for providing your children an education that matches your values.

 

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.