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During a tour of a local public school, I walked into a kindergarten classroom to find the entire class wearing headphones and engrossed in their tablets.
Seeing me raise my eyebrows in surprise, the teacher said, “Don’t worry, they only use their devices for 20 to 30 minutes each day.”
“So, how long do you stay outside during recess?” I asked.
“30 minutes a day,” came the reply.
I never would have imagined that my son would thrive so young with a tablet every day and only 30 minutes a day of outdoor play. Like most 5-year-olds, he was always on the move, exploring, inventing games, and making sense of life through action. At the time, he attended a play-based preschool where imagination and play led to learning and discovery.
I knew sending my son to our local public school would be at odds with his true personality and would be like trying to force a square peg into a round hole. After discussing it with my husband, we decided to enroll our son in a Montessori school, where he thrived.
We are not paying his college tuition.
The idea of sending our children to private school is not at all unconventional, but people are usually surprised when we make the decision to pay for our children’s early education but not their college fees.
We made this decision because we truly believe that fostering a love of learning from an early age will ultimately make our son more successful. He is a creative thinker and hands-on learner who thrives in a smaller environment. Unfortunately, our local public school system has prioritized aligning instruction to state standardized tests, continually made cuts to art and music programs, and experienced increasing class sizes despite a teacher shortage.
For our family, it made more sense to invest in our son’s education during this critical formative period rather than paying for college tuition that we weren’t sure he would attend.
There are options when it comes to college
If you go to university, there are ways to reduce tuition fees, such as scholarships. $100 million Every year, unclaimed money is returned in various forms, from work-student programs to attending the first few years of community college, and it’s naive to think that your educational environment will be the same when you turn 18. Gaining knowledge outside of a traditional classroom setting has never been easier and is increasingly accessible.
We are not paying for my son’s college education, but we have opened a managed account that he will have full control over when he turns 18. For every birthday and Christmas, we put $500 into his account, plus any financial gifts from family, to invest in index funds. We do not stipulate what he does with the money, which is why we chose a managed account instead of a 529 account that would require it to be used for higher education.
Even if we decided to help pay for his college, our assistance would be minimal due to rising tuition costs. We believe spending money now will have a greater impact on his educational experience than saving it for later.
Our son’s school tuition is $9,000 a year, and while we’re considered middle class as a couple with two working parents, we’re not wealthy. Rather than getting caught up in lifestyle changes, we’ve continued to live roughly the same lifestyle we did when we had less income. From owning one car with the mortgage paid off, to cooking our own meals, to buying clothes from thrift stores, we’ve made sure we can save the extra money we’ve made over the past few years.
It was an easy decision for our family to use that money for my son’s primary education.