MSE Parents Club Part 15

MadDogWoman_2

Hugs Jillie - no advice though sorry. I'm thinking of doing a hamper of some sort for my gift from Katie to her uncles.

Becles - you totally deserve a sit down with a cuppa, you do so much most days. Hope Charlotte has a fun at her party, Katie was buzzing until late after her party last week.

SS - Fingers crossed for a non-grumpy Father Christmas.

Not much going on here today, Katie at playgroup, DH at work. I think I'll spend the morning doing my course.

bexta

Becles, I was vaguely aware that the leaving age was being raised, and that another language will be taught in primary, but didn't really know what it meant. I like the idea of vocational training though, and although I hope madam will be academically capable, it wouldn't upset me if she wanted to go down that route either.

I do think there's too much pressure from a young age about choosing a career path. The system is quite a lot different where I grew up, but I certainly lacked the maturity at 17/18 to really know what I wanted to do. Not saying all kids are the same, but I was definately more focused on uni when I went back at 23 (different course), after dropping out in my 2nd year.

cazscoob

morning *yawn* kids out to school and i fell asleep on the seatee for an hour???

I really have sooo much to do but need lots of energy, i would rather climb back into bed though!

weezl74

Let me begin by saing a massive thanks to everyone for debating this with me I really appreciate the time taken.

aless02 wrote: »

weezl, are you gathering everyone else's thoughts before presenting your own?

I guess so more because I'm not always sure whether people would be interested. If you are I am very happy to say. (this not said in a 'boo hoo no one is interested' way. Simply I wasn't sure if it was a topic folk would want to debate together when I asked it.

As you have though,:) I agree with a lot of the points made thus far by very erudite people. I won't repeat those. What I would add is that there are a couple of factors which are possibly a little different/additional in my family.

1) we live in an area of the city where the local english speaking schools are failing, but we both feel this is our 'forever house'. This means that we would likely need to faith educate/welsh educate/privately educate our children for them to do well.

2) As DH is a dentist and my brother and wife to be (and the only aunt and uncle that the boys see) are GPs statistically it may well be medicine or dentistry that one of the boys (or both) might choose (children of medical backgrounds are 80% more likely to choose these careers). This means that DH and I would need to be thinking in terms of 5 yr courses rather than 3 and higher tuition fees.

3) For very personal reasons, I find any kind of debt difficult. I KNOW cognitively that there are good and bad debts. However in my feelings I can't always persuade my self of this, and feel ok having a mortgage and student debts and want/ed rid of those as soon as I could, simply to feel safe. It is the key reason for finding MSE and doing all sorts of things like being the 50p lady and setting up CFR etc. I know therefore the idea of the boys beginning their careers with large debts troubles me.

BrunoM wrote: »

In more general terms - saving is good, but planning to save the same amount every month for the long term might be overly pessimistic? Personally, I am not yet saving for university costs, because I am planning to have more disposable income in later life :) I will probably die when winter comes.

BrunoM wrote: »

just call me the grasshopper to your ant
I guess a related question to Weezl's would be, whether anyone is planning to send their kids to private education, and if so whether they are saving now, or etc?

I understand what you mean about more disposable income later, and yes I heartily agree that my strategies (financial) err on the side of caution (pessimistic). For me this is about no matter what, I have prepared for it, and if not, well whooopie! that's one heck of a cruise or 2 I can go on, IYSWIM?

I do not think you are a grasshopper, nor fear for you in winter given what I know of you. But maybe we are in different circumstances. DH will likely have income drops as time goes on, he has used his highest earning years (if he had been a practice dentist) to be an academic and fund a Phd.

Dentists in their 50s work at about half the pace of those in their 20s because the work is small, exact and fiddly, and older brains do it more slowly, by a considerable amount. So when DH re-enters the world of practical dentistry his earnings will likely be limited.

I never wanted to accidentally hold him back from following his dreams, so I would rather not choose to launch us on a tragectory that he would then subconciously have to try to match (financially).

Does this make sense? You seem very wise in all your choices, and I like to think I am too, but because we are different, it looks different in practice, maybe?

And yes, we do consider private ed. and save for it (by overpaying our mortgage) for the reasons given above. It would be possible (though not a doddle) that without any mortgage payments we could fund 2 sets of school fees locally from salary. After the mortgage is gone, I am next planning to have solar energy added to our house, so that we are also free of energy costs.

My view is that the least which HAS to come out every month as possible, will give us much more freedom to work less, earn less and still support the boys.

SugarSpun

jillie1974 wrote: »

need to get my brothers something, my sister and my bro's gf and get them posted/buy online and get delivered to Dublin...

At this stage I would look for Irish companies because the international post is up its own bottom and the backlogs are making me cry every time I attempt to track my last parcel. If you have an Irish address you can use, sign up to the Irish pigsback.com and see what local companies/offers you can find. I got loads of vouchers from them in the past :money:


Weezl, is there a reason you'd prefer private education to Welsh education? I've always thought that the Welsh non-private system was incredibly sensible, getting their language-brains working very young seems like a very good way to keep their cultural heritage alive in a real way as well as making it easier for them to learn languages later on. I have a bit of a thing about multi-lingual learning (for obvious reasons) but also about private education.

While I want Miss M to have the best education available to her, my parents sent me for some of my education years to a small private school - while I appreciate that the smaller class sizes/higher aspirations and expectations of my peers that helped me to make decisions about my future plans (I probably wouldn't have had the confidence to apply/go to university if I hadn't experienced that) the quality of the education was not the best and often the staff were shuffled from subject to subject based on their free periods - so the English teacher taught geography to some years despite not being qualified and frequently making mistakes. The school looked very impressive on paper and on visits, so I worry that I wouldn't be able to see potential negatives the way my parents weren't able to see them iyswim.

I don't mean to be asking too detailed or too personal questions so feel free to pretend I didn't ask but I am a bit curious. (I'm not asking about faith education because I can see reasons why people might prefer to avoid that even though I am not sure if they would/do apply to you.)


Edit: I don't mean to ask and run but I do have to run. Sorry

r.mac_2

weezl74 wrote: »

Let me begin by saing a massive thanks to everyone for debating this with me I really appreciate the time taken.



I guess so more because I'm not always sure whether people would be interested. If you are I am very happy to say. (this not said in a 'boo hoo no one is interested' way. Simply I wasn't sure if it was a topic folk would want to debate together when I asked it.

As you have though,:) I agree with a lot of the points made thus far by very erudite people. I won't repeat those. What I would add is that there are a couple of factors which are possibly a little different/additional in my family.

1) we live in an area of the city where the local english speaking schools are failing, but we both feel this is our 'forever house'. This means that we would likely need to faith educate/welsh educate/privately educate our children for them to do well.

2) As DH is a dentist and my brother and wife to be (and the only aunt and uncle that the boys see) are GPs statistically it may well be medicine or dentistry that one of the boys (or both) might choose (children of medical backgrounds are 80% more likely to choose these careers). This means that DH and I would need to be thinking in terms of 5 yr courses rather than 3 and higher tuition fees.

3) For very personal reasons, I find any kind of debt difficult. I KNOW cognitively that there are good and bad debts. However in my feelings I can't always persuade my self of this, and feel ok having a mortgage and student debts and want/ed rid of those as soon as I could, simply to feel safe. It is the key reason for finding MSE and doing all sorts of things like being the 50p lady and setting up CFR etc. I know therefore the idea of the boys beginning their careers with large debts troubles me.




I uderstand what you mean about more disposable income later, and yes I heartily agree that my strategies (financial) err on the side of caution (pessimistic). For me this is about no matter what, I have prepared for it, and if not, well whooopie! that's one heck of a cruise or 2 I can go on, IYSWIM?

I do not think you are a grasshopper, nor fear for you in winter given what I know of you. But maybe we are in different circumstances. DH will likely have income drops as time goes on, he has used his highest earning years (if he had been a practice dentist) to be an academic and fund a Phd.

Dentists in their 50s work at about half the pace of those in their 20s because the work is small, exact and fiddly, and older brains do it more slowly, by a considerable amount. So when DH re-enters the world of practical dentistry his earnings will likely be limited.

I never wanted to accidentally hold him back from following his dreams, so I would rather not choose to launch us on a tragectory that he would then subconciously have to try to match (financially).

Does this make sense? You seem very wise in all your choices, and I like to think I am too, but because we are different, it looks different in practice, maybe?

And yes, we do consider private ed. and save for it (by overpaying our mortgage) for the reasons given above. It would be possible (though not a doddle) that without any mortgage payments we could fund 2 sets of school fees locally from salary. After the mortgage is gone, I am next planning to have solar energy added to our house, so that we are also free of energy costs.

My view is that the least which HAS to come out every month as possible, will give us much more freedom to work less, earn less and still support the boys.

Weezl - the bit in bold really struck a note with me. I think that you've hit the nail on the head here. By giving the issue a little thought and making plans - be it chosing a state school, private, uni savings, how you will encourage your children (ie so not just money related) is the main thing here. Well said.

To be honest I wasn't sure whether to post my situation with regards to our hopes of private education for our child, but I do know that this forum is (most often) a very supportive place and I welcomed the input from other people. I was sorry that I hadn't been as eloquent as I had hoped, but hope that no-one is still offended by my posts Ultimately we all found this site for money saving/debt busting purposes and while we all have different circumstances (which are always subject to change), I think that by sharing some of our successes and failures and challenges, we open ourselves up to better strategies and choices for the future.

We will never all agree with each other, but I wouldn't want that. I do like learning from lots of different people though

weezl74

SugarSpun wrote: »

Weezl, is there a reason you'd prefer private education to Welsh education? I've always thought that the Welsh non-private system was incredibly sensible, getting their language-brains working very young seems like a very good way to keep their cultural heritage alive in a real way as well as making it easier for them to learn languages later on. I have a bit of a thing about multi-lingual learning (for obvious reasons) but also about private education.

While I want Miss M to have the best education available to her, my parents sent me for some of my education years to a small private school - while I appreciate that the smaller class sizes/higher aspirations and expectations of my peers that helped me to make decisions about my future plans (I probably wouldn't have had the confidence to apply/go to university if I hadn't experienced that) the quality of the education was not the best and often the staff were shuffled from subject to subject based on their free periods - so the English teacher taught geography to some years despite not being qualified and frequently making mistakes. The school looked very impressive on paper and on visits, so I worry that I wouldn't be able to see potential negatives the way my parents weren't able to see them iyswim.

I don't mean to be asking too detailed or too personal questions so feel free to pretend I didn't ask but I am a bit curious. (I'm not asking about faith education because I can see reasons why people might prefer to avoid that even though I am not sure if they would/do apply to you.)


Edit: I don't mean to ask and run but I do have to run. Sorry

Thank you, those are helpful and interesting thoughts. I think we don't know yet if we do prefer private to Welsh school, it's just that not knowing makes me budget for private as a financial worst-case scenario.

The down-sides of welsh school are mainly that they involve me being able to do two things before fergie is 4, begin to learn and feel confident with welsh myself, and learn to drive (the school is 2 and a half miles away, and me not driving is NOT realistic!) Some of the parents don't speak welsh, but I understand the issue there is that the Welsh-speaking mums can tend to ignore those mums, perhaps seeing them as exploiting welsh school for the wrong reasons (to get the child out of dodgy english speaking school, rather than a belief in keeping Welsh going as an educative language).

The other slight downside I have is that DH is not a linguist, but was made to do Spanish at school, he now finds he cannot replace that with any other new language. This is fine, just not the way his brain works. However, spanish is a romance (ie latin-based) language and therefore is helpful if you do persue medicine/dentistry, as it makes sense of a lot of the latin-based anatomical names.

As I type I realise I have other fears... Ferg was slow to speak, and perhaps I feel tentative about him acquiring mastery in 2 languages still. I have 2 sons and no daughters, and boys tend to struggle more with languages than girls...I also rely on sounding like I know what I'm talking about when in times of stress and needing to advocate for those I love, and I imagine it feeling incredibly stressful trying to assert my needs for the boys in a foreign language (something I know you do, admirably, daily )

r.mac wrote: »

To be honest I wasn't sure whether to post my situation with regards to our hopes of private education for our child, but I do know that this forum is (most often) a very supportive place and I welcomed the input from other people. I was sorry that I hadn't been as eloquent as I had hoped, but hope that no-one is still offended by my posts Ultimately we all found this site for money saving/debt busting purposes and while we all have different circumstances (which are always subject to change), I think that by sharing some of our successes and failures and challenges, we open ourselves up to better strategies and choices for the future.

True And also this is a widely-read thread, and even a 'rarer' viewpoint will be shared by and helpful to some readers. (not that your view is really 'out-there' at all!)

MichelleM

Becles wrote: »

Just wondered if people are aware that education is changing?

Approved training means being an apprentice in various jobs such as tradesman, hairdresser, office admin etc. I think it's like the old YTS schemes.

The last Labour government introduced this and I've not heard anything to say it's been changed again, but it's something to keep in mind for many of the children on here.

Theyre changing the curriculum AGAIN. :mad::(:mad: They have recently introduced Diplomas- in media, hairdressing, beauty, engineering and so on. They are more technical and have more theory too. However, now there is a new government, they are being thrown out of the window and they plan to focus on just the core subjects- English/Maths whilst making other subjects less important- humanities, religious studies, dance,etc. Its all a load of twaddle. The education system certainly isnt fair and it certainly doesnt fit the needs of thousands of children in this country. Forcing them to stay in education isnt fair either. It does have its pros but until the goverment provide a secondary curriculum that sticks around for more than a few years, its pointless.

Sami_Bee

Weezl - I don't think she has been around for a little bit but I think its "beckyandJack" that is a dentist that sends her LO to private school maybe her POV would be useful to you but alas I do not know where she be!

Oh and I also meant to say I don't think that sending a child to private school means you *have* to send them all, A friend of mine was the middle of 3 his older brother was in my sister's year and didn't want to go private he came to the state high we went to, my friend went to the private school just as high school and his younger sister went from about age 7 because that was the earliest that particular private school took them.

CAFCGirl

Morning all x