Tag: paying for private school (page 1 of 6)

Repair is a radical act

Paying for private school can be challenging but savings can be found in the most unusual places.

A broad category of savings is in that of repairing instead of replacing. The awesome Patagonia company (buy their stuff – it lasts a really long time) has a marketing campaign called “Repair is A Radical Act”.

Their focus is on the incredible environmental benefits of first looking to repair items before deciding to replace them. It’s also cheaper for you. Here at Paying for Private School we do it to save three environments: a child’s, a private school whose values we resonate and the world at large.

A tale of two tables

When we bought our current home ten years ago and the patio furniture conveyed with it. Not because the previous owners thought it would help sell the place but because they didn’t really want to take it with them. Nor would the table have survived the trip. Low on cash we took this rickety table and continued to use it for a decade. Over time squirrels also used made use of the furniture to sharpen teeth and claws. Bits of sharp wood were sticking up on the surface. It had come unscrewed and it was time to be replaced. Ominous squeaking sounds omitted from the gray thing every time we sat down on it.

Our glorious refinished table. Finished by hand!

Believing repair as a radical act I bought a $24 palm sander and learned how to use it on an unsuspecting wooden cutting board that had broken in half early in the week.

Armed with below-novice knowledge, a sander, a hammer and low expectations, I hammered the nails back in, sanded it and re-stained it with a protective outdoor stain. For about $80 bucks in total I now have a table that would cost $300 new. And I get to keep the sander should I need it again for some future project.

And I saved $220, we learned a new skill (a number of us took a go with the sander) and delayed the need for a new table to be created, stored, marketed, shipped and sold. In the short term this will help us pay a tiny bit of the tuition bill and over the longer term, in aggregate, this will result in less stuff being created from the natural world. One table is enough.

You can do this too and start saving money *and* the environment.

Repair is a radical act.

Change your perspective on what is awesome

March 28, 2019 / G. Ruga / 0 Comments

It is time for a new stove in the paying for private school household.

Our 30 year GE Spectra Electric Oven is awesome – it cooks food inside the house without lighting it on fire with the push of the button. But it’s a smokey mess and a health hazard. We would probably be fine with it but we are inspired to replace it but not break the bank doing so.

Unlike many newer stoves this one has exposed coils on the bottom. The theory being that you use the self-cleaning option to blast all the particles and you would never need to clean the bottom by hand with anything other than a wet rag.

We tried this self-cleaning thing twice. The fumes and soot and smoke were overwhelming – even with the windows open and us out of the house. On the second run on it I thought that maybe sending soot and carbonized cleaning supplies that were into the air wasn’t good for anyone . And I could blast it out of the house where it would immediately harm anyone walking in the neighborhood.

Maybe I was doing it wrong? So I went to the internet and was appalled to find that the self-cleaning option will kill small pets, and reduce the life of the oven (and presumably the oven operator). Yeah I don’t want that – but what to do? Research of course!

In my search I found that the Maytag Company offers an awesome Aqualift technology that uses water and heat to get some of the grub off the sides. It doesn’t make the stove spotless but attacks the gunk at the bottom, which is what really smokes up. No chemicals, no fumes, lower energy use. To my way of thinking this appears to be the perfect stove.

Imagine my surprise when folks were posting notes about how it doesn’t clean the sides and is totally lame. So the manufacturer dutifully returned to the high energy approach and retailers discounted the AquaLift models.

We got ours, new I might add, for $537 instead of the original $899. Even with this small challenge I think this technology should be the most expensive, not the least, given the leap the company has made in a healthier and greener self-cleaning option. Go them.

100 years ago our ancestors cooked on wood stove or an open fire. Before that they cooked outside in the fire – if they were lucky. Many people, today, right now, are cooking with cow dung. Here is a handy instructional guide on how to do so.

And cow dung is major advance from earlier times when (Ezekiel 4:15) Then He said to me, “See, I will give you cow’s dung in place of human dung over which you will prepare your bread.”

But folks on the message boards are going nuts:

“The AquaLift cleaning feature does not work. I tried it twice in a row & still had crusted patches of grease to deal with.”(Home Depot Message boards)

And I don’t mean to pick on this particular person – I am sure I would react the same way and then need to catch myself. Here is the point; stop trying to optimize everything. A working stove is awesome. All of them are modern engineering marvels of system engineering a the stove level and more broadly mining, materials engineering, electrical utility generation and input, financial management, shipping and logistics, regulation, insulation, retail and advertising.

A working stove that steam cleans itself is super -amazing – awesome.

To pay for private school you, retire early or do anything worthwhile you must be ok with second place in a lot of other areas so you can focus resources on something meaningful and worthwhile to both you and the broader community.

I am not saying you need to dry your own poop into cooking blocks and use it. Or even use cow dung (unless you have ready access to a free supply of pellets).

However, if you always seek to optimize on everything by purchasing the best means your income – essentially your life energy – will be frittered away in a thousand different directions and the optimized solution might actually be way worse for your health than a lower cost alternative.

By changing our perspectives on what is awesome ( a hot plate is way better than hot poo, for example) you can focus on what is important to over the longer term.

Free installation with any purchase!

November 1, 2018 / G. Ruga / 0 Comments

We recently purchased a super fancy set of revolutionary Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide detector. These things talk to each other and alert us to the specific location of the room the problem is occurring in. Fantastic!

Nest Protect Advanced Wireless Smoke Detector Available on Amazon.

We replaced the existing 30 year old hard wired smoke detector alarms with the Nest Protects. These things will even contact you phone if something happens. I got an email from the first one when I shut down the power for the second installation. Well done Nest team! It is not clear are old ones would have even gone off (when removing them the tag noted they expired in 2003) in a fire situation. Will yours?

Do it yourself to save money

This amazing technology combination is available for only $99 each. And an installer can be hired to connected wired ones for $80. We opted to pass on that and to save the money and the hassle (for all involved) of taking a day to have someone out. The first one took me about three hours of watching videos and carefully proceeding (mostly issues with removing the old one). The last one I installed took less than thirty minutes from opening the package to the final test.

Take your time

If conditions make sense, do the installation yourself. Watch the videos (as many times as you need). Follow all instructions and expect to run into snags that will require more research and take additional time. This isn’t a race and you aren’t being graded on efficiency. If you are like us you will find the experience saves money which can be used for private school tuition and is more rewarding than taking off work for an installer to arrive.

Use the innovation cycle to save stacks of cash

October 1, 2018 / G. Ruga / 0 Comments

Life 100 years ago

One hundred years ago most people worked 60 hours a week and there was one car for every 50 people. And then they came home to dark homes – many did not have electricity. And the first appliance just turned a hundred a few years ago.

There has been remarkable advancements in the past 100 years and you can use that to your advantage to save stacks of cash.

Freeze your standard of living

To save money with no effort, simply freeze your standard of living in time. Do you want a stainless steel fridge? Forget it – no one even had a refrigerator 100 years ago. Even better, the modern marvel of 50 years ago is now the economy version of today so your replacement cost is lower each time you need to replace an item.

Need that latest turbo, all wheel drive, leather interior badged car? No you don’t! You will be just fine with an economy car and still be better off than 49 out of 50 people 100 years ago.

So Many Horses!

Did you know the model T ford generated 20 horse power?

What amazing technology! 20 horses in one device! Wow!!!

The 2018 Ford Focus generates 160 horsepower and made the list of lowest cost cars! That is 8 times the power of the model T and 160 horses! That is plenty of zoom and more power than most farmers had 100 years ago. And it the Ford Focus of HorsePower Awesomeness can be owned new for a about $18000. And, amazingly, this is still costs less than the slower (inflation adjusted) Model T Ford price of $22,000. And you can often (but not always) save more money purchasing a used car!

Public Domain, Link

The idea here to freeze your standard of living where it’s at now. No upgrades, just replacement items. You will be just fine keeping the things the same. You know this because you live exactly that way right now!

Add Even More Horsepower

In a pickle and want to save more money? Work 55 hours a week. 50 at work and doing your own chores around the house you currently outsource. You will save money and might get a raise.

By attempting to match your grandparents work ethic and freezing your standard of living your cash flow will almost immediately turn positive. I look forward to seeing you soon in the private school parking lot in your amazing horseless carriage. Zoom zoom.

One day only special! Half-priced cars!

September 7, 2018 / G. Ruga / 0 Comments

Want a tip for buying a great car at a discount?

Go contrarian – buy out of style cars

Here is what we did; we purchased an older car but with relatively few miles for it’s age but was out of favor at the time we purchased it.

This has varied over time depending on the circumstances which makes our car history quite varied and has almost always caused raised eye brows on our choice (we take that as a good sign).

At the time we purchased our last car, during a late stage bull market, luxury cars buyers certainly did not want an out of style luxury car that someone else drove in. The perception of “luxury” typically doesn’t pair well with “used”.

And economy buyers wanted the used cars rated highest for reliability.

This left few buyers in the used luxury cars market segment. And we really value safety features so we watched the market for a really safe used luxury(ish) car.

And those conditions means we were able to get our current rig at a much lower cost than one would expect.

Behold the Battle Wagon

Our current rig in all it’s glory:

Volvo Wagon – New to us!

Swedish steel! Best in class safety. Row boat like styling. Squishy seats. Impossibly thick paint. Odd brown stains on the ceiling of questionable provenance. Vintage!! Did you know they don’t even make this model any more? It’s true! And butt warmers!

Buy older cars with low miles to get lots of trouble free service

The Battle Wagon was ten years old with only 75K on the odometer when we purchased it. Net, we bought this unloved ride for 80% off the original sale price. It was fairly low cost. Indeed, once we sold the our previous battle wagonette and accounted for the ten years without cable savings the car was effectively free with years of pre-paid gas included. A brand new car would have absorbed all those savings and I would have been worried about scratching the fancy doors.

Right now electric cars are out of favor because of low gas prices

Right now non-Tesla electric cars are out a vogue and can be purchased for a song. With low gas prices they are really out of fashion. You can get one for a fraction of the cost of similar vehicles. Well, that is until gas prices go back up.

Want to be an environmentalist? Get a used electric car and reduce fossil fuel emissions *and* save a perfectly good car from going to the scrap heap. You are *so* green. More of a outdoors person? Wait until gas prices go back up to the $4 and $5 a gallon price range and get one of those gigantic pick-em-up-truck for half price.

Please check the safety rating on the model year and proceed!

Don’t quit!

September 1, 2018 / G. Ruga / 2 Comments

Scrimping and Saving

I realize most folks are frugal so they can escape the rat race and the idea of living frugally and then spending it all on tuition fees seems somewhat counter intuitive to many people.

Our thinking is that we are paying for a school that aligns with our values and educates our child. We are supporting our family through a great education and the school through our tuition. It means lots of stuff doesn’t happen, and we keep lots of records.

If you are following a similar path, after years of scrimping for school your spending will be on autopilot. And one day you will reach that point where there is no more tuition and you can redirect those funds to retirement savings. And one day you might have the option to quitting your job! Don’t!

An alternative

Instead select a job you enjoy and a cause that resonates with you and funnel your future earnings there. Or take on a volunteer with a charity. Help a family member. Write poetry. Or start a blog. The point is, set aside some side to be productive and direct that output to the benefit of other people.

After all, your education (from elementary school to today) probably cost more than your car. And your house. Don’t let it go to waste simply because you are done with it. After being so efficient for so many years it seems sort of wasteful to let your productive capacity diminish through lack of use.

The idea of voluntary simplicity in spending to eventually to spend most of the time on the beach might appeal for you. And do it. For a year. And then use your good fortune, your skills, and your hard acquired skills and education for the greater good.

Consider giving it away. Imagine the good you can do if you are so fortunate. I bet there is a school you are really familiar with that could use some donations from income you don’t need or hands on volunteer help.

We need you

But don’t quit. We need you. And you need us.

“The used key is always bright.”

― Benjamin Franklin

By paying for private school you are funding educational experimentation.

August 1, 2018 / G. Ruga / 0 Comments

One thing that has consistently surprised me about paying for private school is the unsolicited advice and harsh criticism we regularly receive.

We have heard simple advice such as you are wasting your money to all the way to it is unethical to send our child to private school.

In few other areas of our life have our decisions been reviewed, rated and then commented on so consistently.

There are lots of other easy targets – our home, my really old shoes, food, entertainment and religion are ripe for the picking. They might get a raised eye brow but rarely do we receive a detailed unsolicited analysis of our decisions like we do with our choice of education.

Online it is even worse. Here is a just one of many examples; If you send your kid to private school, you are a bad person.

I consider myself a pretty open person. For each criticism and suggestion I have careful considered the premise. Am I wasting our limited resources? Am I making education worse for other children? Is a school based on religious values wrong – that is- I am alienating religious minorities?

I have spent years considering, and reconsidering, this feedback. And would certainly be nice to have the extra cash or go on fancy vacations or purchase a new car from the modern era.

As a mental exercise I followed Charlie Munger’s advice and I inverted the problem. Come along with me.

Let us imagine there were no private schools at all. That small church school around the corner – gone. Harvard. Gone. Hogwarts. Gone. Evangelical schools. Gone. Homeschooling – illegal.

Have a child with extreme dyslexia who needs a different learning environment? Sorry those schools are gone as well.

Graz Reading Room by Dr. Marcus Gossler –
Wiki Commons

What is left is a pure government monopoly. No competition. No incentive to innovate. No incubators to experiment and fail and try again. Just one system. Legislation over teacher expertise. Scale over specialization. The motor vehicle registration of education.

Well that doesn’t seem desirable.

Let’s invert again – this time there are no public schools. Anywhere. It is all private schools. Can’t afford to pay tuition? Sorry your kid goes to the low cost school mill or comes to work with you for apprentice training. Are you an elementary aged child whose parents who can’t afford to feed, much less educate you? Sorry – you will never learn to read beyond a second grade level.

Old School House Sign – Source: Wiki Commons

Well, that doesn’t seem desirable either.

Perhaps the middle road seems to make sense. A healthy mix of public, private and home schools creates a mutually beneficial ecosystem. The private schools can experiment, innovate, evolve and best practices can be adopted across all systems over time. The public schools can offer a world class low costs education for everyone no matter their financial circumstances. And they provide standardized testing to measure all schools academic performance.

Home schooling fills in the gaps. We know of one very religious family who has four kids and couldn’t afford private school so they home schooled simply so they could integrate their religion into the school day.

Sending your money and your kid or grandkid to a private school? Good for you. Your child is receiving an education that matches your values and you are funding an educational incubator. Perhaps your school, with its freedom to try different things out, will come up with an innovation that will be adopted by schools across the country. More likely the children from your school will bring their education to diversify the mental frameworks of the organizations and community.

You are right to send your child to private school if you are lucky enough to have the opportunity to do so and are willing to make the sacrifices.

Monopolies have consistently been shown to cause complacency over time. Here in the US the Sherman Act was passed in 1890 as a “comprehensive charter of economic liberty aimed at preserving free and unfettered competition as the rule of trade.” [1]

By paying for private school you are funding educational experimentation. And unfettered competition. Be ok with the criticism. Listen to the unsolicited advice and harsh criticism and carefully consider it. At the end of the day you have to do what is right for your family and your community – even if it is unpopular.

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/antitrust-laws

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

Winston Churchill

Skip the Tip! Take it to go and eat at home.

July 23, 2018 / G. Ruga / 0 Comments

This took me many years to discover but it has served us well. Despite being on the frugal track we occasionally eat out (ok, more than occasionally). Sometime as a family sit down dinner or for a special occasion but most often because we go out because it would be fun to go out.

To save 15% at a restaurant, skip the tip by taking the food to go. That will save 15% (or 20%) on the bill because there is no tip. And, after a while, you realize you have drinks at home. And bread. And that is another few dollars saved.

Electrical candlelight!

Instead, set your home up to be a delightful place to eat with a fancy and clutter free table that include forks that haven’t been in a million people’s mouths (a no cost bonus!). At the Café De Your Place there is never ever a wait. The table is always open, there are just enough seats and it’s the best table in the joint.

Plein Air!

In the summer we eat out on the ‘rustic’ wood table that came with the house. This year we added a coral maple to enhance the view at our fine dining establishment. How many restaurants do you visit have this kind of greenery? Get creative (but low cost) and set up your own ambiance.

Paying for Private School’s Frizzy Coral Maple Tree of Awesomeness.

If you are like most families where eating out just overtook the grocery sales then you probably spend around $2625 on dining out.

Ha. I know the truth. If you have the income to consider a private school tuition and live in metropolitan area that number is much higher. It is more like $6000 a year. Lets go with $6000. That is $900 a year in tips if frequent wait in line and then sit down establishments. Toss in another $100 on desserts and drinks over the course of a year and we will make it an even $1000.

Show em’ the sink!

I know some of you are secretly cringing because you spent way more than three or even six thousand on dining out last year. This is a judgement free zone. We are here to help. You just have more opportunity to save! Start with an immediate 15% discount on many (and soon to be rapidly declining) restaurant meals. And enjoy the further benefit from having your children rarely hearing the phrase “I will be your server for this evening”. They need the gift of responsibility and can get up and get their own water when they need a refill.

This one slight change in behavior nets you $1000 a year and comes with a free side of humility for the entire family. A $1000 here and there starts to look like a tuition payment and there are lots of easy ways to save big money.

Paying for Private School French Country Kitchen

Paying for Private School French Simulated Country Kitchen- comes with reading materials. How many restaurants do that? Don’t worry, we bought those chairs used.

Don’t complain. Build.

June 3, 2018 / G. Ruga / 0 Comments

In November of 2016 Mr. Money Mustache (required reading) retweeted a post by Elon Musk that said “Don’t complain. Build”.

Create, design, join or invent a way to make your situation better. Is your local school system mediocre and you can’t afford private school? Get involved and improve it.

Us amateurs work really hard to create something pretty mediocre only to have to do it again. And again. I had to install the disposal in our kitchen three times before I got it right. This is 30 minutes of work for an average plumber. It took me two weekends. I don’t care. Honey badger doesn’t care either. It works, it has been there 5 years and I saved $300 in labor. Plus, I prevented a plumber from having to do something basic. And I *really* know a lot about disposals now. When it had a problem last month I was able to fix it really quickly

By Janekpfeifer – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

without a reference manual. I even remembered where the stupid screw that came loose was located. How could I not after spending 20 hours under the sink looking at something with only 3 parts?

Critical thought is an important skill. Identifying what is wrong and how things could be better is important as well. But this must be followed up by action. Repeated attempts, slow progress actions is the grit of making stuff go. Posting a complaint hidden as a comment revealing how insightful you are doesn’t actually do anything.

Don’t complain.

Build.

Paying for private school in the DMV area

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