Why Affording Private School Doesnt Mean You SHOULD

public or private school. We could afford private school, but then everything else would be much would be on much tighter budget and college would be harder to save for. Can you put price on education? Somebody's trying to get us in trouble. Can you put price on how much you we love our children? No, of course not. But this is really difficult this is difficult thing to navigate that lot of parents face because private school costs more than public school. It's expensive. It pulls on your finances in different way. But whenever we're faced with this question, we always have to come back to all right, what is our money? Our money is nothing more than tool that allows us to accomplish the goals that we have. Well, one of the goals that you may have as parent is hey, want my kids to be in certain educational institution for certain reason. Maybe it's better education. Maybe it's because there are cultural things that are attractive about the school or maybe it's because the way the information is shared and taught or maybe there's some other extenuating circumstance that justifies you deciding to put your kid in private school. You may be surprised to hear this. We're not going to fault you on that. We're not going to fight you on that, but we are going to remind you that every financial decision you make has an opportunity cost. If deploy my dollars in this direction do this thing, that means I'm not deploying it in this direction do this thing. And what you have to do as parent is you have to weigh those. You have to say okay, is the reason I'm sending my kid to private school justifiable and pragmatic and practical reason or do just want to do it because it sounds cool and because it looks fan fancy. And then what the Joneses next door did is they sent their kid to private school so now I'm going to send my kid to private school. If that's the case, perhaps this is not the best use of your funds. But if you say you know what, really want my kid to be in this school for this specific reason and recognize that what that means is instead of being able to go on that vacation or being able to upgrade that car, maybe even being able to fund college in 529, we're going to focus our thoughts and efforts and resources here in this place right now. think that's okay, but that's not financial decision. That's life decision. You have to make sure that you're measuring them both equally. I'm so conflicted on this answer. Just to give you guys full transparency. I'm both Bo and are products of public education. also served on and was chairman of school board for many years. Large school system over 40,000 students. And So love public education. think it's always if you if you've seen me when when did the Millionaire Mission book tour, the thing talk about is that education is the ladder up. So have this tremendous respect for the entire institution of education, but will tell you got my own wake up call with cuz my oldest daughter she's brilliant, she's smart, she's super talented. So talented that even though she's brilliant at math, she's also very creative. So she had this whole thing as she was choosing college majors, she went the creative track even though she has this brilliant analytical mind. So she did great in the public school system. But then got the diagnosis that my daughter was autistic and you know and and there was lot that came with that where felt like you know, after going we were going to the Marcus Center in Atlanta and then when we made the decision to move up here so that that she could go to specialized school that was in this neck of the woods, at least let me know was doing everything could to let her become the best version of herself. Now it was very expensive, but the why was so powerful that it made it important. Now will tell you this is the other side that Bo was talking about. We live in unique community where have heard parents say want my kids to be in the class with some of these other prominent families, celebrities and that cuz lot of them are at the private schools. And don't know how feel about that because it's true. mean mean feel like that's ridiculous. mean think think it is. don't think financial mean maybe it's financial, but but remember this this thing gets into the financial order of operations is cuz yes, step eight, prepaid future expenses. Typically we're talking about college. But when people are are totally throwing everything at their kids including through 12 education at the expense of their own financial future, yeah, mean that that that that seems to be problem and there's no guarantee that your kid is going to attract those relationships tippy tops. Now have stories where you know like it's kind of crazy that you know like spring break on yacht. Like have neighbor who's and then was like, are you kidding me? And he's like, guy he tells me how he made all his money and was like, well, that's kind of crazy. So mean it can't, but that's not don't think that but that doesn't help the parents in their financial situation and that doesn't even probably cuz I'll tell you you know, it probably won't even help the kids. They just got great spring break. You could give them great spring break too without all that. So It sounds like what you're saying is the why matters and you want to make sure that your why behind making the decision actually makes sense and it's not some vanity thing It does. It's it's kind of like the car once again, we share brain is cuz that's the exact same thing. had my daughter pay for half of her first car because felt like some scarcity in her life as well as no having skin in the game on the process was important. think you have to be careful what you do what you put your kids towards for the future as well. mean is it what is creating cuz that's the other thing have found. You let me go ahead and tell you another true fact between public and private cuz this is something I've seen with lot of my neighbors around here. Public school systems like if you want your kid to go to the public college in the state you live in especially in the SEC in the southeastern area. Like if you go to Georgia public school, you you have much better chance of going to University of Georgia. If you go to public school here in Tennessee, you have much easier chance getting into University of Tennessee in Knoxville. That's not the case. will tell you lot of kids who go to private school, the public universities only allocate so many private slots from each of those schools. So now you've got the all these kids competing and that's one of the things I'm like, so you paid all that money for education only to make it harder if you know your kids want to go to Knoxville to be Vol, what are you doing? mean cuz you just probably made it harder. If you want your dogs to be dogs cuz you know you grew up in Georgia, what are you doing? You know, mean this is something begin with the end in mind because think sometimes we get caught up in all the status and social stuff. That that's not that's not the good why part. think you know, having special needs child you know, was valuable enough because had some special so got to split. did the public situation, but also done the private. But you really need to hone in on that why to make sure you you have that figured out, but also begin with the end in mind because if your goal is to get the kids into that public school in the state, do some research and figure out which one's actually give you the path the easiest path to get there.