UK tax forces parents to choose between housing and schooling their kids.

The Daily Telegraph today exposes how the crippling consequences of the UK government's tax and spend policies pose a heartrending dilemma for one ordinary family:

Their dilemma is how to fund the cost of the girls’ education without sacrificing their lifestyle.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/12000288/We-earn-190k-a-year.-Do-we-need-to-sell-our-flat-to-afford-private-school-fees.html

That is not a violin ANON, that is the sound of my heart pumping piss.

But to be honest, there isn't any real problem.

A power greater than myself decided that the none of the local state schools were good enough for our little angels, so they were both privately educated. I managed to pay the fees by the simple process of working 25 hours a day and 8 days a week.

Our life style didn't suffer because we were both too knackered to have one.

Please ignore that retard anon who has been on benefits for the past 20 years and his lazy ass doesn't know what it's like to work and pay taxes.

Unfortunately that's London's reality. But it does sound like their money isnt being managed properly.

it does sound like their money isnt being managed properly

You have a talent for understatement. If these poor unfortunates ever encounter someone selling magic beans, it's going to make an awful dent in that £190,000 p/a.

Its really not London reality. If you think it is you don't live in London. They have the easy life, this is definitely a case of 1st world problems! Though I wish them all the best when the revolution comes!

>>7
What you have to understand is that inner London is really the only habitable place in the British isles.

There's no way these idiots, who seem to have wandered into insanely lucrative professions despite being unaware of how life works on even the most basic level, could save themselves a fortune by buying a house in Slough, Maidstone, or Chelmsford and sending their children to a school that doesn't insist they cosplay as 19th century bank clerks.

What you have to understand is that inner London is really the only habitable place in the British isles.

How do you work that out?

Yes it is if you want a decent standard of living. I've lived in London for 10 years and moving back next year. If you have a family it's really hard. My best friend who has a mortgage and is on 60k a year salary with her partner making pretty good money too is going to struggle now. Her maternity leave will only pay ridiculous amounts, like 90 pounds a week, she doesn't qualify for any child taxes or allowances because she's considered to be a home owner, so she has a high mortgage plus two little babies to feed and look after, her partner will have to support them from his wages alone. Once she can go back to work she will have to pay a fortune for nursery, that's like 1k a month for each child. Raising a family in London is only gonna work if you're poor or rich, if you're middle class you're fucked.

Sorry to break it to you, but your friend isn't middle class, their rich!

so that means they are pissing away at least 50K per year

hat means they are pissing away at least 50K per year

Bit harsh. I don't want to live in a world where you can't spend a sum more than twice the average annual wage on entertainment, travel, and dining.

It's a hard knock life

How dreadful.

If they add 24k per year to the flat's mortgage, they need to increase the monthly rent by 24/315 x 950 = £72 every year to cover it.

Easily do-able - where's the dilemma?

There is no dilemma. Features like this are the equivalent of the Jeremy Kyle show for upper middle class professionals. In return for pretending they have a problem the Telegraph's money expert needs to fix, the Brownstains are given a public forum to parade their income, professional achievements, property, lifestyle, and progeny.

Nice to see the Telegraph standing up for the under privileged again.

Amazingly not an Onion piece.

I would be more sympathetic if they didn't have such wanker jobs. An ambulance chaser and a business bollocks.

Can't blame them for wanting the kids private schooled though. Of course it will make a difference if your kids go to school with the next generation of CEO's or the next generation of terrorists.

Why is business bollocks a wanker job?

My parents sent their children to a public school. One of the reasons they chose the location they did for a home right before I was school age was because they liked the school system and they wouldn't have to send us to private school.

In the UK, a public school is a private school.

We call our non-private schools, state schools.

I didn't realize there were terminology differences. Thanks. But still wouldn't a state school in an area where those who can afford a decent home typically be at least pretty good? In the USA there are excellent and terrible 'public' schools.

Yes, I agree with all that.

wouldn't a state school in an area where those who can afford a decent home typically be at least pretty good?

Yep. If you read the feature, the author says the Brownshirts both went to private school and want their children to "have the same experience".

Running that through my translator, they don't want their kids mixing with anyone from a less privileged background and think school is as much about the contacts you make and outings to Swiss ski resorts as it is about the quality of teaching on offer.

>>26
the contacts you make
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Probably more to do with not wanting to mix with kids who don't want to learn and slow down and disrupt class.

Perfectly legitimate concern - "why should my child suffer because your child is an idiot?"

>>27
Probably more to do with not wanting to mix with kids who don't want to learn and slow down and disrupt class

Schools which are run as businesses only accept pupils whose genius is matched by their dedication.

Their parents' wealth confers these qualities upon them.

The only people who didn't send their kids to the public school in my district growing up were those who wanted their kid's education to be religious based, wanted their kid to have a chance to make a sports team or the kid was a bit of a problem child and prone to trouble.

Same here. I imagine it's different when you start looking at expensive upper class prep type schools, but around where I grew up, there were a lot of catholic or religion-focused private schools to protect those kids from bad influences (hilarious).

Yes you can to a degree, but they usually don't still come close to private. I've read that schooling in London is extra tough though and that schooling is a huge issue. We also have Grammar schools which are high academically selected state schools. These are the schools people really want to get their kids into. Selective, with great results. They were originally created to give bright kids from less affluent backgrounds the chance to go down the academic route when most kids usually left school at 15 and went down the mines or got an apprenticeship etc.

Now the more affluent send their kids to junior private schools who prepare them for grammar or private school entrance exams or send them to state and tutor them to pass the tests for Grammar. So now the places for the less affluent kids are taken up by the middle classes and those who will opt for private if their offspring don't make the grade for Grammar.

Not quite.

Public schools for the most part were set up as charities for local children in the 19th century which have just warped since then.

Private schools don't have the prestige of the public schools, but still offer the better chance of successful uni applications.

State schools are funding by the state, however these are now broken into 3 categories (on top of the remaining two remenants of the old system grammars, and comprehensives)

Local authority schools - schools run by the local government, the government isn't keen on councils having control of schools so increasingly only special needs schools remain in local authority control (though due to the high cost some councils have been lobbying the government to allow them to force such schools to become academies.

Academies - can be run in chains and have no local oversight, are still bound by the national curriculum and other national standards such as on nutrition.

Free schools - can be set up and run by anyone and do not have to follow any national rules. though this is changing since the trojan horse incident in Birmingham were muslim extremists gained control of several academies.

Any school in the UK can also be a religious school, and bizarrely due to councils having to allocate places but having no control over supply you have had situations where atheist parents are being forced to send their children to religious schools such as one case were parents were forced to send their children to a sikh academy

>>32
While understanding those distinctions, nobody in the real world uses that nomenclature. Outside the relatively small number of people who send their kids to a fee-paying school, anywhere that charges for admission is referred to as a private school.

they borrowed money to buy a flat and made 140000 of the poor but they are worried about 24000 school fees? Why don't they grab another bit of the monopoly board and screw some more losers?

Clearly they should sell the champagne and truffle hobby farm, and maybe consider letting go 2, maybe 3, of the under-footmen.