Let me start with a breakdown to help understand the situation:
We Owe $100,000 on a $200,000 home (Looking to move in 5 years)
1 car paid off / owe $13,000 (0 interest) on another car
No Other Student Loans / Credit Card Debt, Etc.
I am 28, make $55,000 a year in very Low cost of living area
12% towards 401K
$62.50 a week on pretax HSA.
$25 a week towards 529
I am maxing out my Roth IRA
Have 6 month emergency fund
Wife is 26, makes $40,000.
10% towards 401K
About to start Roth IRA
No other contributions
We have 1 child that is 13 months and will be trying for #2 in the spring. We want 3 children and my wife wants to end up working part time and taking care of the kids.
We both went to Private schooling K-12 and graduated from a good University. However, the price of Private schooling has more than doubled since we went there and we are looking at $9,000 a year from 1-8 and High School will end up being circa $18,000 a year per child. There is a county 15 minutes from our city where the public schools have some of the highest ratings in the region. The education is comparable to the private schooling we were sent to, just without the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would cost to send 3 children there. One of the issues is that my parents think public schools are the devil. They both went to a rough public school in the city and sacrificed to send us to private schooling. They did struggle for a few years but made it through. If I go the public route, I will have no issue with retirement funding, vacations, and providing my kids with everything they need (without spoiling). If I go the private route, I feel all of these things will be sacrificed.
I am having a difficult time with this as I want to pay for the entirety of all college costs for my kids and want them to have no debt coming out of their schooling. I feel this will be difficult to do without sacrificing on retirement savings (we already can't max out 401K as is). Has anyone else been in this situation or have some insight on the topic?
Let me also say that this keeps me up almost every night. I am a high stress individual by nature and this is at the top of the list.
Thanks in advance for the responses!