Could You Live Paycheck-to-Paycheck?

[Weisass]

Heck, I went to a prestigious college-prep catholic school in the Bay Area, and there were kids dealing and doing drugs on campus all the time. So, I don't think it is possible to avoid these things. They are everywhere.

[GuitarStv]

At my high school, it was the "gang" stuff.  I recall that it was a fad for a while to wear a red or blue bandana on your arm or stuffed into your back pocket in support of whatever rap group was cool at the time.  We were in a pretty well off central Maryland suburb, so a lot of that crap was just posturing, but I had several friends whose parent's pulled them from public school when that got to be popular.

I had a bit of that in my American high school, which was Montgomery Blair HS in Silver Spring, MD. I remember my locker neighbour used to sell weed out of his locker! It didn't really bother me though, and I took it in stride as just part of the normal circus of growing up. You have some kids selling/using drugs, some kids getting pregnant at 14, and other kids very studiously going for Magnet/AP classes so that they could get into Stanford/Harvard/MIT later on. If your kid has a good head on his or her shoulders I think exposure to bad elements is not really a bad thing at all. I've never sold drugs! I did learn a bit about street pricing though! Pretty fascinating for a 13 year old and just as interesting as algebra/calculus!!

The high school that I went to was in a lower income area.  We had a permanent police officer on detachment stationed at the school because of the knife fights that regularly broke out.  Gang colours would get you expelled.  People tended not to keep drugs in their lockers because they brought in the drug dog two or three times a year through the school.  There were drugs though, so I'm not sure how kids worked out how to avoid that problem.  Kids are resourceful.

This isn't only for you @GuitarStv , I'm more curious for those poo-pooing private school: Let's say this ^ is your local school, and you'd rather not have your kid in an environment where knife fights are common. 

Do people think parents have some sort of moral obligation to keep their kid in that environment? 

Is it acceptable in their minds to move to a better/safer school? 

Is using the same money it would take to move to instead send your kid to private school somehow different?

Yeah, coming from a high school of about sixty waaaaay up north, it was quite a culture shock for me.  There were more kids going there than people who lived in the town I grew up in.

That high school was a bit weird . . . there had recently been educational cuts and school closures in the area, and basically three different high schools were all being funneled into the same building now.  It was massively undersized for the student population (we had twenty portables that were set up on the football field in addition to the regular classrooms).  There's always a certain number of bad kids at a school - in this school there were just way more students than most schools have, so a greater number of bad kids.  Although it was certainly around, I never got stabbed and none of my close friends got into fights.  The actual schooling itself was good.  I had some really outstanding math and physics teachers, who are basically the reason I ended up taking engineering.

I totally get why someone would want to send their kid to a private school hearing that though.

Would I have been better off at a different school?  Maybe.  I don't know.  I certainly would have developed a very different understanding of how to handle myself around others, a different perspective on other people's problems, and a different view of whether or not hard work is a panacea to free people from the circumstances of their birth.  In university I ran into more people from the privileged/private school set . . . violence (although often of a different sort) was still a thing and from what they said they had more exposure to drugs than I ever did.

[roomtempmayo]

Heck, I went to a prestigious college-prep catholic school in the Bay Area, and there were kids dealing and doing drugs on campus all the time. So, I don't think it is possible to avoid these things. They are everywhere.

That some kids are smoking pot is a very different hazard than physical violence.

[GuitarStv]

Heck, I went to a prestigious college-prep catholic school in the Bay Area, and there were kids dealing and doing drugs on campus all the time. So, I don't think it is possible to avoid these things. They are everywhere.

That some kids are smoking pot is a very different hazard than physical violence.

One of the most common misconceptions when it comes to violence in private schools versus public schools is that the former is always safer. That’s not the case. Violence occurs in both school types, though it can look different.

In public schools, physical violence is more common, but private schools see many kinds of bullying. Often, the violence in private schools is more subtle, though no less harmful.

There also tend to be fewer instances of violence in private schools, leading people to believe that the students behave better overall. The answer could be that there are simply fewer students, so the chances of fights are lower.

Public schools have to answer to the local departments of education. As such, they have to report every incident that occurs on school grounds. That’s not the case with private schools. They aren’t required to answer to governing bodies, so reporting violence in private schools can be more lax.

  - https://rachelschallenge.org/blog/violence-in-private-schools-vs-public-schools/

[redhead84]

DH and I have done this thought exercise - how would we spend everything we earn - and it always comes back to housing. We could buy the big extravagant house and easily spend it all.

That said, I spoke with a friend this weekend who is spending 8,900 on laser hair removal. I guess we could go the death by 1,000 cuts route and get there too. ;)

[classicrando]

Heck, I went to a prestigious college-prep catholic school in the Bay Area, and there were kids dealing and doing drugs on campus all the time. So, I don't think it is possible to avoid these things. They are everywhere.

That some kids are smoking pot is a very different hazard than physical violence.

We had a cocaine ring in my high school, during the time I attended.  A few years later, when my sister was attending, it had one of the trash can baby news stories.  I did, however, get into fewer physical altercations there than I did at my Catholic middle school the three years prior.

[JupiterGreen]

DH and I have done this thought exercise - how would we spend everything we earn - and it always comes back to housing. We could buy the big extravagant house and easily spend it all.

That said, I spoke with a friend this weekend who is spending 8,900 on laser hair removal. I guess we could go the death by 1,000 cuts route and get there too. ;)

Whoa insane!

[roomtempmayo]

Heck, I went to a prestigious college-prep catholic school in the Bay Area, and there were kids dealing and doing drugs on campus all the time. So, I don't think it is possible to avoid these things. They are everywhere.

That some kids are smoking pot is a very different hazard than physical violence.

We had a cocaine ring in my high school, during the time I attended.  A few years later, when my sister was attending, it had one of the trash can baby news stories.  I did, however, get into fewer physical altercations there than I did at my Catholic middle school the three years prior.

Sure, bad stuff can happen everywhere, but that doesn't mean it's equally likely everywhere, that every bad thing is equally bad, or that you shouldn't make any effort to avoid bad stuff.

I expect every parent on this board makes conscious or unconscious decisions to try and maximize the odds of good stuff for their kid(s) and minimize the odds of bad stuff.  I don't understand why private schools are a taboo component of that calculus, especially when moving to different schools is regarded as perfectly fine.

[twinstudy]

At my high school, it was the "gang" stuff.  I recall that it was a fad for a while to wear a red or blue bandana on your arm or stuffed into your back pocket in support of whatever rap group was cool at the time.  We were in a pretty well off central Maryland suburb, so a lot of that crap was just posturing, but I had several friends whose parent's pulled them from public school when that got to be popular.

I had a bit of that in my American high school, which was Montgomery Blair HS in Silver Spring, MD. I remember my locker neighbour used to sell weed out of his locker! It didn't really bother me though, and I took it in stride as just part of the normal circus of growing up. You have some kids selling/using drugs, some kids getting pregnant at 14, and other kids very studiously going for Magnet/AP classes so that they could get into Stanford/Harvard/MIT later on. If your kid has a good head on his or her shoulders I think exposure to bad elements is not really a bad thing at all. I've never sold drugs! I did learn a bit about street pricing though! Pretty fascinating for a 13 year old and just as interesting as algebra/calculus!!

The high school that I went to was in a lower income area.  We had a permanent police officer on detachment stationed at the school because of the knife fights that regularly broke out.  Gang colours would get you expelled.  People tended not to keep drugs in their lockers because they brought in the drug dog two or three times a year through the school.  There were drugs though, so I'm not sure how kids worked out how to avoid that problem.  Kids are resourceful.

This isn't only for you @GuitarStv , I'm more curious for those poo-pooing private school: Let's say this ^ is your local school, and you'd rather not have your kid in an environment where knife fights are common. 

Do people think parents have some sort of moral obligation to keep their kid in that environment? 

Is it acceptable in their minds to move to a better/safer school? 

Is using the same money it would take to move to instead send your kid to private school somehow different?

I don't want my kid being subjected to knife fights, but I think in my neck of the woods, that is an easy bar to clear. Any 'decent' public school or decent (affordable) private school will pass that benchmark, let alone a selective entry school.

I don't have any issues with parents sending their kids to a decent public/private school or selective entry school, and paying modestly where needed. What I dislike is 'elite' private schools. No one sends their kids to an elite private school to get away from gang violence - plenty of cheaper schools already offer that. People send their kids to elite private schools for the networking or other perceived top-end benefits, and my view is that (1) these benefits also come with drawbacks, (2) the juice isn't worth the squeeze, (3) networking is trivially easy for any intelligent child without pathologies and (4) if you really want your kid to have elite networks, give her your own.

[FIREin2018]

At my high school, it was the "gang" stuff.  I recall that it was a fad for a while to wear a red or blue bandana on your arm or stuffed into your back pocket in support of whatever rap group was cool at the time.  We were in a pretty well off central Maryland suburb, so a lot of that crap was just posturing, but I had several friends whose parent's pulled them from public school when that got to be popular.

I had a bit of that in my American high school, which was Montgomery Blair HS in Silver Spring, MD. I remember my locker neighbour used to sell weed out of his locker! It didn't really bother me though, and I took it in stride as just part of the normal circus of growing up.
You have some kids selling/using drugs, some kids getting pregnant at 14, and other kids very studiously going for Magnet/AP classes so that they could get into Stanford/Harvard/MIT later on. If your kid has a good head on his or her shoulders I think exposure to bad elements is not really a bad thing at all.
I've never sold drugs! I did learn a bit about street pricing though! Pretty fascinating for a 13 year old and just as interesting as algebra/calculus!!

Same here but one time i saw his gun in his locker.
What would you have done in that situation?

[GuitarStv]

At my high school, it was the "gang" stuff.  I recall that it was a fad for a while to wear a red or blue bandana on your arm or stuffed into your back pocket in support of whatever rap group was cool at the time.  We were in a pretty well off central Maryland suburb, so a lot of that crap was just posturing, but I had several friends whose parent's pulled them from public school when that got to be popular.

I had a bit of that in my American high school, which was Montgomery Blair HS in Silver Spring, MD. I remember my locker neighbour used to sell weed out of his locker! It didn't really bother me though, and I took it in stride as just part of the normal circus of growing up.
You have some kids selling/using drugs, some kids getting pregnant at 14, and other kids very studiously going for Magnet/AP classes so that they could get into Stanford/Harvard/MIT later on. If your kid has a good head on his or her shoulders I think exposure to bad elements is not really a bad thing at all.
I've never sold drugs! I did learn a bit about street pricing though! Pretty fascinating for a 13 year old and just as interesting as algebra/calculus!!

Same here but one time i saw his gun in his locker.
What would you have done in that situation?

I'd have quietly told the principal about the weapon and let school administration deal with it.

[charis]

Heck, I went to a prestigious college-prep catholic school in the Bay Area, and there were kids dealing and doing drugs on campus all the time. So, I don't think it is possible to avoid these things. They are everywhere.

That some kids are smoking pot is a very different hazard than physical violence.

We had a cocaine ring in my high school, during the time I attended.  A few years later, when my sister was attending, it had one of the trash can baby news stories.  I did, however, get into fewer physical altercations there than I did at my Catholic middle school the three years prior.

Sure, bad stuff can happen everywhere, but that doesn't mean it's equally likely everywhere, that every bad thing is equally bad, or that you shouldn't make any effort to avoid bad stuff.

I expect every parent on this board makes conscious or unconscious decisions to try and maximize the odds of good stuff for their kid(s) and minimize the odds of bad stuff.  I don't understand why private schools are a taboo component of that calculus, especially when moving to different schools is regarded as perfectly fine.

This is all a matter of opinion and personal experience, at least what I'm seeing on this thread. I don't think every bad thing is equally bad, but I think a lot of well-positioned parents assume that one bad thing is worse than another without experiencing the reality of it, because they are turned off by high poverty and lower test scores.  For instance, as a former private school student (I'm talking about high school specifically, primary and college were generally fine), I personally feel that my public school student (where there can be fighting and they have metal detectors) is subjected to less bad things that would actually and potentially negatively influence them than if they went to an affluent private school. And the positives are significant.  To be clear, there are a LOT of issues and administrative problems in large, high needs school districts.  No one schooling option is winning, as far as I see it.

And I disagree, generally speaking, that moving to different schools is perfectly fine vs going to a private school; I think it heavily contributes to segregation, both economically and racially, depending on region, and tends to fall in line with historical redlining.

[Cranky]

At my high school, it was the "gang" stuff.  I recall that it was a fad for a while to wear a red or blue bandana on your arm or stuffed into your back pocket in support of whatever rap group was cool at the time.  We were in a pretty well off central Maryland suburb, so a lot of that crap was just posturing, but I had several friends whose parent's pulled them from public school when that got to be popular.

I had a bit of that in my American high school, which was Montgomery Blair HS in Silver Spring, MD. I remember my locker neighbour used to sell weed out of his locker! It didn't really bother me though, and I took it in stride as just part of the normal circus of growing up. You have some kids selling/using drugs, some kids getting pregnant at 14, and other kids very studiously going for Magnet/AP classes so that they could get into Stanford/Harvard/MIT later on. If your kid has a good head on his or her shoulders I think exposure to bad elements is not really a bad thing at all. I've never sold drugs! I did learn a bit about street pricing though! Pretty fascinating for a 13 year old and just as interesting as algebra/calculus!!

The high school that I went to was in a lower income area.  We had a permanent police officer on detachment stationed at the school because of the knife fights that regularly broke out.  Gang colours would get you expelled.  People tended not to keep drugs in their lockers because they brought in the drug dog two or three times a year through the school.  There were drugs though, so I'm not sure how kids worked out how to avoid that problem.  Kids are resourceful.

This isn't only for you @GuitarStv , I'm more curious for those poo-pooing private school: Let's say this ^ is your local school, and you'd rather not have your kid in an environment where knife fights are common. 

Do people think parents have some sort of moral obligation to keep their kid in that environment? 

Is it acceptable in their minds to move to a better/safer school? 

Is using the same money it would take to move to instead send your kid to private school somehow different?

My kids went to a very low income high school in a very working class neighborhood in NE Ohio. It was pretty small and everybody knew every body from kindergarten on, because there was one elementary school, one middle school and one high school. I was on the PTA board of all three of those schools and I knew what was going on.

There really weren’t knife fights. There was some drug use, but drugs actually cost money and many of the kids were too poor for that.

One of my kids spent two years at the Catholic school where she thought people would be nice because they were religious. This turned out not to be true - they were just richer.

One of my kids ended up going to a boarding school with an IB program (for free) and it was a fantastic fit for her.

But all of them learned a whole lot of important things about how people struggle, and they all did just fine academically. They all have college degrees (without loans) and real jobs and I have no regrets.

[swashbucklinstache]

People send their kids to elite private schools for the networking or other perceived top-end benefits, and my view is that (1) these benefits also come with drawbacks, (2) the juice isn't worth the squeeze, (3) networking is trivially easy for any intelligent child without pathologies and (4) if you really want your kid to have elite networks, give her your own.

I agree on (1). I didn't find much research on lifelong happiness, a better metric to measure! This abstract was interesting though. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/723066

(2) is hard to say. Some say the ultimate income discrepancy is pretty large even accounting for social & cognitive background. It probably comes down to what would the parents otherwise do with the money?
PDF example I thought was decent
https://rrs.scholasticahq.com/article/8035.pdf

(3) Some even contend that every aspect other than educational attainment pale in comparison. This British paper is an easy read though a really old cohort.

The findings do not support the widely-held view that the labour market advantages enjoyed by private school alumni can be traced largely to their different self-valuations, aspirations or social networks. Only a relatively small part appears to be associated with these factors. In fact the largest role is evidently played by post-16 educational and cognitive skills attainments.

PDF
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1474424/1/DreamingBig.pdf

(4) is mostly only a consideration for people who can afford it and thus likely have the network. Not everyone does though, like my parents, who had the money but not the network.

My personal experience that I longwindedly shared earlier is that this wasn't the case for me (n=1). I was on the bowling team in high school; we had no squash team. It was not trivially easy for me. By the time freshman year was over and I caught up socially, high finance was not really an option for instance. Elite private school may have been worth it for me.

I fully agree with you on what I think is your core point. If an average well-networked, involved, wealthy parent is facing a choice of elite private school, modest private school, select entry public, or just a well-funded public school, the latter two + investing tuition likely make a lot more sense on average.

[Jack0Life]

2 ways of interpret this question.
- Could we live PtP on what we make ?
My wife brings home roughly $4k and month and I bring home $5k(I used to bring ~$9k).
$9k is an awful lot of money for 2 people to spend with no kids and no mortgage.
Our frugal mindset won't let us do it so the answer would probably be NO.


- Could I live PtP as in just getting by ? Oh hell NO.
I did that going through college and that was rough.
I used CC to make payments on other CCs and trying to get through the months.
It's a huge stress and something I would never want to go through again.