The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: Ozone on July 03, 2018, 04:09:43 PM
-
I'm new at this, but I have a potential job where the only good public schools for my kids are in an area where the houses are $600k to $1.5mil (!). I will probably walk away from my current house with $200k for a downpayment. I have a bunch of stock that's been growing for the last 5-10 years. I'm 47 with 2 school age kids.
Given the choice of:
1) goto a cheaper public school district and hope that the kids will find some AP classes to inspire them
2) Pay the entry fee for the good-school neighborhood and live with a $400k+ mortgage
3) Cash my stocks in to pay cash for the house and use my upcoming 6-figure earnings to build back my savings
4) Send kids to a private school for the next 10-12 years at a cost of at least $8000/kid
What would you choose?
-
How "bad" are the other school districts? Is that based solely on test scores?
What are your criteria for a good school? Mine were:
1) Safety - I'm not sending my kids to a school overrun by gangs
2) Emphasis on non-core subjects - I want them exposed to art and music.
3) A variety of extracurricular activities - even though I live in Friday Night Lights land, I wanted to make sure my kids had other options than sports if they wanted that
4) Has a librarian. We moved out of a great district because their answer to a tight budget was to eliminate the library staff.
5) Had an all-day GT program. My youngest needs this. Our other district pulled GT kids out for a few hours a week only and that would not have worked for my kid.
6) Has advanced academics. Even if your kids don't need it, you don't want the kids who did bored in your kids' class and causing a fuss
7) Has a large population of families who don't look like us...because the world doesn't look and act exactly like us.
Instead of moving to the suburb with the "best" school district, we moved to a good district...and we are zoned to the worst elementary school in the district. On purpose. Because where we live, test scores primarily reflect the parents' socioeconomic status. Our "worst" elementary school has lower test scores because half the kids are low-income and it's not majority white. So my kids have friends who are rich, some who are poor, some who are white and black and brown, some whose parents are recent immigrants and some whose families have lived in this area for generations. It's sparked so many awesome conversations and is so different from my childhood experience (my hometown was 99% middle-class white). We love it here and our kids are challenged and thriving...but I have friends who think we were crazy to put our kids in this district.
-
If you go for the expensive house I would pay for it wih that 6 figure income. If you sell stock you not only have to rebuild your savings but pay yourself for lost compounding and time.
When retired you can eat your stock, you can't eat the house.
-
I'm new at this, but I have a potential job where the only good public schools for my kids are in an area where the houses are $600k to $1.5mil (!)...
What would you choose?
5) Rent in that good school district. With those home prices, it will be less costly than PITI+maintenance.
-
Given the choice of:
1) goto a cheaper public school district and hope that the kids will find some AP classes to inspire them
2) Pay the entry fee for the good-school neighborhood and live with a $400k+ mortgage
What would you choose?
I'd choose 1 or 2 in that order. I have done well in school and been to a variety of schools. The best schools did not result in good things for me. I ended up doing amazing due to specific teachers who happened to be at an average quality school. So I wouldn't equate results with a fancy schooling.
With a lot of extra $$ in the family budget you can support their interests with trips, courses and educational resources. Not to mention being a great financial role model.