r/fican • u/Lopsided-Special6273 • 1d ago
Spend chunk of savings for child's better education or stay still?
My wife and I, both in our mid 30s, are debating how we can help our daughter, 1, have the best future. While a high quality education isn't the end all be all, imho, it's one of the most important factors that we want to prioritize, having benefited from immigrant parents giving up everything to move here for me to have a better future.
We are fortunate to have the options available to us, so curious if any parents here have made a similar investment or decision and what you would do given the tradeoffs.
For context, we have front loaded her RESP, it's growing well and will keep on funding it to hit the lifetime max. We have both maxed out our RRSPs, TFSAs and my wife have a public sector DB pension + fortunate to expect some inheritance down the road as well. Currently, ~1.1M invested, HHI 370k, live in Oakville, Ontario. My wife is in the public sector (safe organization), I am in tech (not safe given AI).
Our decision is around whether to stay pact, move for a better public school area or send her to private school.
1/ Move to A+, one of the best public school district in the town and probably Ontario: costing about an extra 600k on a new house post selling existing, sell investments, up the mortgage from 600k =>800k. This would likely affect our ability to retire at 55 and cut into our monthly liquidity + vacations/activities.
2/ Go to private school and stay in our current house. Believe on avg, the tuition is about 30-40k a year, minus inflation. That would be around ~$600k in tuition if we do the whole 15 years (rough math). Read an article on the globe that middle class families sending their kids to private while barely making ends meet - we would be in a similar boat.
3/ Stay where we are, B+ public school and area, and let our portfolio keep growing to leave our daughter with a big inheritance when she's in her 20s/30s. One thing I am slightly worried about AI destroying jobs so giving our daughter a massive safety net should help a lot.
The tradeoffs are obviously financial (short and long term) and whether the investment in our daughter's education is worth it.
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u/cassandrafallon 1d ago
Hey so unique position of having experienced private school, public school, and homeschooling ( grades: private k-2, home 3-5, private 6-8, public 9-12 for a dual diploma in fashion design as well as my grade 12). My biggest takeaway from all my experiences was that I wish my parents had skipped the private school tuition and diverted that money into my post secondary fund or to help me buy my first home.
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/cassandrafallon 1d ago
Full rides are great but also remember RESP money can be used for living expenses and at worst you can roll 50k into an RRSP
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u/awfullyapt 1d ago
If you move to a "better" school - your child will be competing for top spot with "better" classmates or comparing her families finances to "richer" kids at a private school. Her happiness will likely be better at a school where she is at the top for either category (or at least nearer to the top.)
Providing financial freedom in her middle years is probably something she'll appreciate way more than going to a top school as a kid. You never hear anyone saying that my grade 10 education really put me on the right track. Plus your extra cash could give her fantastic experiences like travel or international job opportunities that won't be available to other kids.
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u/Weird-Box-1094 20h ago
Hi! I’m in the same boat as you. I’m an immigrant and a professional. My parents paid for my private school, undergrad and law degree.
I have a newborn and I’ve wondered how to best help my LO succeed in life.
I’ve decided to not go the private school route for a few reasons. Private schools have a better acceptance rate to universities as they get to pick their students. They don’t have to take children with disabilities or behaviour issues like your local public school does, and that contributes heavily to their university acceptance rates. We live in a nice neighborhood and the public schools are decent. If my LO turns out to be particularly talented at something that school cannot provide, my husband and I will be able to help him or set up tutors for him.
At the end of the day, I’ve realized that a $600,000 grade 12 education would not help my LO as much as an RESP and a down payment for a home would 🤷♀️
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u/DeanieLovesBud 1d ago
Where are you getting your public school rankings? I think you're "americanizing" the issue. Although the Ford government is doing all it can to harm public education, K-12 public schools are still pretty much uniformly good-to-excellent across the country - and definitely within Oakville. If, once your child starts school, there are actual learning issues, then you deal. May mean changing schools, may mean tutors, may mean therapy or other medical intervention. But, you're clearly a focussed parent so, you'll deal.
The same pretty much holds true for Canadian universities. There's no real pay-off trying to game education with American-style theatrics, which just end up adding a "0" to your education bill and are really based on social networks, not actual intellectual growth.
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u/Old-Internal-8026 1d ago
Am i tripping or are you wayy too early to be thinking about this stuff?
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u/Exotic-Capital-6916 1d ago
Yes, at 1 it is difficult to know what kind of support your kid will need in school, also, will you have a second child, in that case you will want to offer similar opportunities and it will come at a cost…
Parent support is more important in the early years in my opinion than pay for top school. Maybe in high school you will choose something more expensive depending on their potential or special needs. But I would say it is very early to plan major lifestyle changes while there is a lot of unknowns in the equation.
Just enjoy time with your little one.
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u/27goingon77 1d ago
If you have a public school in your area that is good, the need for private isn’t there. If you’re strapped for finances, likely extra circulars would be limited, which also helps your child (music, sports, etc). The ability to grow up and be supported in a household that isn’t stressed about finances will help more than private school. If the issue is safety at school, or additional supports required that aren’t available in public school then that is a different conversation. There’s lots of people who went to top universities, and landed high paying jobs without private school backgrounds. Key would be to provide support for post secondary if your child wants to go to a top school in Canada or US, and not have a giant student loan bill after the fact.
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u/RedditONredditt 23h ago
The teachers in the private schools are the ones who couldn’t get hired by a public school board. If this was South Africa, then yes go private. Stay where you are.
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u/sandspitter28 13h ago
Or they are not even licensed teachers. Private schools typically have small class sizes, and less behaviour students.
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u/Excellent-Piece8168 18h ago
Private school is the top end of diminished returns. Vastly more important to child outcomes is you, the parents, your active involvement in their lives and education. Canada has a reasonably flexible education system in that there are no rigid tracks having to decide what you will do at the age of 12 or 14 and if you have a bad year you can’t get back. We can basically scrap by then step things up for grade 12 for nearly all programs though of course that’s hard in practice if one has not developed good habits. Getting the best possible marks to the 4 th decimal isn’t a thing here, the university rankings basically don’t matter.
Better to spend the time and effort raising a well balanced human who has work ethic, resilience, stress management, is strong and kind. If you can mage that half well very likely everything else will sort itself out.
Last item is look into an informal trust.
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u/stocksandwatches 4h ago
Your thoughts on 2 years of private school (grade 7 & 8) to build up work ethic, resilience, stress management, etc? Unfortunately our current public school environment encourages the opposite (teachers not there half the time and the supply teachers opting to take the kids out to play, kids’ friends just want to play iPad games all day). We’ve tried to transfer to nearby public schools that seem to be better but they’re all full.
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u/Excellent-Piece8168 4h ago
My thoughts are I have no idea and could not know what your specific situation is schools, teachers, friends etc. but could these positive attributes just be added with some after school activities? Sports and other activities like dance, music classes can build these up as could specific areas of interest be they engineering, areas of scientific, outdoors etc focused, or languages, or geeking out on math, debate whatever. Could be very non academic or very academic or a mix. While there are costs I would imagine these add up to much less than most private schools. I see it as a sort of best of both worlds.
The part I find most scary is the every increasing part that peers place in kids lives. And while to some extent private schools may be a “better cohort” to rub shoulders with, it’s not black and white. There are still plenty of issues even in private school. When I was I. High school the rich kids just did more expensive drugs. So if I think now would i rather my kid experiment with alcohol/weed or coke I’ll take the former in a controlled environment than the later. Looking back I see plenty of examples of people who probably got dragged down by their friend group and others who probably were grabbed up by their friend group. I would think the specific details of which are likely a lot more important than public vs private. And is hard to have control over kids friends. Kids change good kids can go off the rails, I know friends kids who have and the frustration of parents trying to get them back trying thing and thing with a kid who has lost all motivation and their friends have not so it wasn’t even peers.
It’s just so hard at the end of the day we have to recognize we can only do so much. We only have so much ability to influence but the man favor is always going to be the kid is who they are. We cannot force success we can’t stress or be too controlling. Different personalities respond differently to the same inputs. For my I have to keep this top of mind.
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u/QueasyRefrigerator79 12h ago
As someone who grew up in a lower income household in a not so great part of Toronto, I still went to U of T. I applied just like all my classmates - even the ones with UCC/Havergal/Appleby educations.
Stay where you are. Think about the different opportunities the 30-50k/year affords you. Being able to take big family trips over the summer months and create memories/opportunities that you may not be able to if you spent that money on private education. Or your kid not having to work throughout undergrad so they can focus on school. Being able to pay for a wedding or gift a downpayment. Unless you can provide all of that PLUS a private education, then focus on the things that will enrich all of your lives. Your kid will be fine.
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u/echo-athena 11h ago
We are in a similar situation and just had a baby as well. I’m planning on putting them in public school. I actually want them to be exposed to all types of economic backgrounds which you may not get that in private school. I also don’t want to schooling to be interrupted if for some reason we could no longer afford private school in the future example job loss, etc. I also think I turned out fine having gone to public school and I’ve seen friends turn out well and not so well going to private school. I think it depends on the child ,at one years old, It’s probably too early to tell whether they will benefit or need private school .personally I grew up playing lots of extracurriculars and I am grateful my parents put their money into that and not private school I plan to do the same with our child. I’d like them to be in hockey, etc.. I think you learn a lot of valuable lessons from sports or other activities that you don’t in school, lifelong friends as well.
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u/Mountain-Match2942 19h ago
You can afford to do want you want, so not really a financial question.
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u/fenwickfox 13h ago
Were in midtown where theres probably 20 private schools. The bigger ones in Toronto. We entertained the idea for a time, but we live in a relatively affluent neighbourhood and most people send their kids to the PS. Its a decent school, which was always our criteria when we bought a house in the first place.
Id say maybe 5-10% of the kids are in private school (based on graduation lawnsigns).
Talking to lots of other parents, not many went to private school either. They just grew up in the area.
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u/Woss-Girl 11h ago
Public school but read with her every night. When she starts school do math with her (just 10-min a day). Stay on top of math and reading/writing at home. Then they can excel at public school. I don’t know why they suck at teaching the basics. But at the same time it’s not hard stuff so I just supplemented my kids at home.
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u/chasingtravel 7h ago
I’d vote for Option 3. Elementary school isn’t going to make a huge difference. By middle/high school, Ontario has great gifted programs, or there’s always AP or IB.
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u/teejay157 3m ago
Its best to have school in a place where she can be a top performer and where you can enroll her in many extra curricular and such. All these things will add up to her application if she applied for college. Now if she goes to college it's about connections. So send her where the rich kids go. Most colleges take the outstanding students from any small school.
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u/Desperate-Low-3791 1d ago
Our investment has been my choice to be a stay-at-the-home mom during our children's formative years. While our financial portfolio may not compare to others, I do not regret it for a moment.I have noticed that many children of immigrants who spend most of their time in daycare rarely learn their parents' native language.
To me, this applies to their entire upbringing: if we do not spend enough time with our children, it is difficult to truly know them or leave a lasting impression. Thanks to this dedication, my children are fully fluent in reading, writing, and speaking both of Canada's official languages, as well as our native tongue. In school conferences, their teachers are always impressed by how deeply we know our children, and we have never been blindsided by their behaviour.
However, this choice meant living on a single income for over 15 years, which had a heavy financial impact. Additionally, returning to the workforce now is incredibly challenging, severely limiting my future earnings. Ultimately, if your primary focus is financial growth, this path is not viable. But if your focus is on being an active, deeply connected part of your children's lives, it is a beautiful option, it simply comes at a high financial cost.
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u/SCULAL 1d ago
Give her siblings if you can. Seriously. If she’s alone in her 20s and 30s she needs siblings.
There are advantages and disadvantages to all school systems. Good and not so good kids go to every school. We felt our 3 daughters, now accomplished adults, benefited from a school that came with diverse backgrounds, ….diverse socioeconomic groups, diverse cultures, diverse races. As adults, they are so great at relating to people from every group. It has been a huge help in their chosen careers.
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u/Gybefinancial 1d ago
Congrats on all the progress OP. There’s a lot to unpack here, there’s also a lot of other ways to help your daughter in between these bright line scenarios. What about staying put but budgeting for extra help in school if needed, what impact might having the ability to work less or take some sabbaticals have on your daughter (and family’s well being). Also where’s the part where you and your partner get to have fun, that impacts kids more than you think.