Tuition Dilemma | Imamother

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Tuition Dilemma

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amother

Mon, May 23 2011, 6:03 pm

JAWSCIENCE wrote:

Liba wrote:

I am just stuck on this, how are you getting 5+ (two parents, three school age children, plus possible children not yet in school?) plane tickets to E"Y for $4000? Tickets are hard to find that cheap, and summer tickets are usually so expensive.

What happens if tickets are $6 or even $8,000?

It's not just 1500, it's also the amount of money should we pay for a camp. She is saying 1500 because she would spend the camp money anyway. I am inclined to agree with barbara about the camp issue though.

Also as a dan lekaf zechus measure for those angrily eyeing neighbors taking trips while the school is hurting - we are going to Israel this summer as a family with my in laws for a total of 7 adults. We paid nothing for the flights. We got ridiculous mileage deals through hours of labor on finding good mileage earning deals and got all the tickets for free with miles. My husband is a mileage genius. And if you stay by your Israeli relatives that means the trip could be less expensive than someone else's local vacation. This sort of thing is rare but it DOES happen.

sorry off topic, but Jaws, I always wondered how people get free miles on tickets. I fly often, have credit cards to accrue miles, but have never amassed even a one way ticket to israel. from my research you have to spend $250,000 in one year to get 5 free rount trip tickets to Israel. How do you and others do it? There must be some secret that I just don't know on getting miles? how specifically do people go about accruing tons of miles.?

There's some secret that I just dont know that you guys do. please let me know how it's done

amother

Mon, May 23 2011, 6:20 pm

You live simply and for once you want to take a vacation- my opinion- go and enjoy it. If you're rabbi said you don't have to use the money for tuition, then you have who to rely on.

JAWSCIENCE

Mon, May 23 2011, 7:33 pm

amother wrote:

You live simply and for once you want to take a vacation- my opinion- go and enjoy it. If you're rabbi said you don't have to use the money for tuition, then you have who to rely on.

You cannot extend a Rabbi's heter carte blanche and then say you are relying on him. This is a pet peeve that I have. People ask a Rabbi one question and then apply it to other situations and say so-and-so Rabbi said it is ok. The Rabbi said she could save her money to prepare for the future and her retirement. He said nothing about a trip to Israel and using his name to justify this is completely inappropriate. She should just go back and ask him about this situation. It seems there is all ready a relationship and he is aware of the financial situation.

JAWSCIENCE

Mon, May 23 2011, 7:49 pm

amother wrote:

JAWSCIENCE wrote:

Liba wrote:

It's kind of the subject of an entire different thread. But the key is actually OPENING a credit card when there is a good mileage deal going. Usually you can find one that will give you 30,000-50,000 miles for opening a new card however if you look well you can find ones that offer much more. We found ones from reputable companies (AMEX, Chase, Capital One) giving 75,000 to 100,000 miles. I even got one for 150,000. They also waive the yearly annual fee. This is why I protested when a poster tried to get everyone to sign up for a card she was recommending that had a 450$ annual fee unless you canceled right away and was only offering 50,000 miles and some benefits like getting you into places that most credit card offers also come with. She wanted you to use her referral link so she could get points and kept saying how her whole yeshiva did it. It was no way the best deal out there. But she was very vehement about it, so I just posted a general warning and then avoided that thread.

We shared these particular cc deals with many other family members who were planning on going on this same trip. it meant a lot of hours on the phone and email walking them through the process. However a decent amount of our extended was also suddenly able to afford the trip now that they have the miles. We ended up with several thousand extra miles that we will sell.

You have to spend a minimum amount in a certain time (usually something like 3,000$-10,000$) however we did this by paying bills we normally pay using the card and paying the card exactly when it statemented to ensure no late fees etc. We paid things like my brother-in-laws Yeshiva tuition and got paid back by my father-in-law. This type of plan only works if you normally pay bills and they can be paid by cc and if you are not the type to overuse or abuse a cc. I also needed to open a new cc to improve my credit score so this worked well for me. If you are not a safe cc user then you should run like heck form this because getting into debt is not worth the few thousands you save on the airfaire. I am a very safe and conscious cc user so I have learned to use them to my advantage.

ValleyMom

Mon, May 23 2011, 8:51 pm

Excuse me in advance for being morbid but my BFF who is from Israel hasn't been back in 18 years--is on a very limited income despite the fact that she and her husband work extra jobs. They are on scholarship HOWEVER when her dad died recently she flew herself and the body to Israel. She split the cost of flying the body with her siblings and her airfare was $1,800.
In THAT SITUATION I can see the "special occassion".

Bar Mitzvah in Israel is a LUXURY.

Seeing a specialist for a bone marrow transplant or organ transplant is a special situation.

Frankly I am exhausted by all those fraudulant parents who plead poverty and park their beautiful shiney Mercedes several blocks from school to avoid being seen by members of the scholarship committe.

G-d forgive me for being so aggressive but this sort of dishonesty sickens me.

amother

Tue, May 24 2011, 2:09 am

JAWSCIENCE wrote:

amother wrote:

JAWSCIENCE wrote:

Liba wrote:

how many miles generally translate into a r/t ticket to israel?
also is this a one time thing? do you cancel the credit card after getting the miles- because it seems that most charge a fee (even for the first year), and it doesn't really pay unless you get that big bonus of miles in the beginning?
it still seems that you have to pay a lot even after the bonus miles for opening a card. for example, even if you get 100,000 miles to open up a card, and you need about 80-90,000 to buy one round trip ticket to israel. and from one of my current cards you get about 1 mile per dollar you spend, you need to spend another few hundred thousand to get a few plane tickets. When you say you spend all your bills, do you really need to spend $200,000-300,000 to get it? do people really have bills that big?
can you recommend credit cards that you've used that have given good mileage?
also, if you want to do this again, say in a year from now, is it possible?
and, if the miles are all on your name- from your credit card- how do you transfer it to family members, to buy them tickets as well?
thanks

Marion

Tue, May 24 2011, 2:17 am

If you get a mile/$ spent and use the card for everything you get (example):

12,000 points/year on groceries (not including Pesach)
2,400 points/year on gas
1,200 points/year on phone/cell phone/internet
1,200 points/year on cable/satellite/TV
2,400 points/year on your electric bill
1,200 points/year on your water bill
600 point/year on your gas bill
2,400 points/year on clothes
1,200 points/year on medical co-pays

116,000 point/year so far...

Add dental. Vision care (glasses). Date nights. Gifts. Pharmaceutical. Special promotions (like if you have Air Miles so you have an A/M collectors' card AND a CC that accumulates points). Car repairs & maintenance. Insurance premiums.

Tamiri

Tue, May 24 2011, 2:28 am

saw50st8 wrote:

Ask yourself this:

Would you call a tzedaka organization and ask for the $5,000?

IMO, if you have $5,000 to spare it should go to the school.

ITA. If it were "just" $500-$1000 then I'd say fine, you deserve it. But $5000 is a heck of a lot to spend on any one event if you need assistance for something for your family.

JAWSCIENCE

Tue, May 24 2011, 9:41 am

amother wrote:

how many miles generally translate into a r/t ticket to israel?

depends on hte airline. AA is about 90,000. Continental is about 75,000

amother wrote:

also is this a one time thing? do you cancel the credit card after getting the miles- because it seems that most charge a fee (even for the first year), and it doesn't really pay unless you get that big bonus of miles in the beginning?

Every single card I signed up for waived the fee for the first year. In fact I found that to be the norm on the better deals. So you can cancel after one year and never pay a fee. However, when you call to cancel they will often waive the fee again so there's no need to cancel for another year. Or many will let you downgrade your card to a card that has no fee. Having a card open for a long time actually improves your credit so I tend to downgrade. This is a complicated issue that is really too much for this thread. I have posted about your credit cards as relates to credit score on my blog.

amother wrote:

it still seems that you have to pay a lot even after the bonus miles for opening a card. for example, even if you get 100,000 miles to open up a card, and you need about 80-90,000 to buy one round trip ticket to israel. and from one of my current cards you get about 1 mile per dollar you spend, you need to spend another few hundred thousand to get a few plane tickets. When you say you spend all your bills, do you really need to spend $200,000-300,000 to get it? do people really have bills that big?

If you get 100,000 for the card, then you have gotten enough for one round trip ticket for free. We each opened one card so we each got enough miles for our ticket to be free. We were dealing with adults here so each person was able to open their own card and that equaled their own round trip ticket plus some mileage leftover. Therefore I am not seeing why you think we needed to spend another 200K. We pooled the extra mileage left over from the individual cards to get a ticket or two for some kids.

The miles per dollar thing is never the best way to get a huge chunk of miles at once. What we paid on our bills was not for the miles per dollar. It was for the minimum amount you must spend to get the sign on bonus. Usually round 10,000. We have a lot of relatives paying full tuition for several kids. Their schools allow payment by cc. You better believe a person with several kids in a Yeshiva has bills of at least 10,000. As a family trip everyone was in this together.

amother wrote:

can you recommend credit cards that you've used that have given good mileage?

Depends on what you are asking. If you would like t know what cards give good mileage for dollars spent or good cash back for dollars spent I have posted on my blog about that. If you want to know about huge chunks of miles on opening a card most of the deals we used have expired by now but they keep coming back in various forms. It is kind of complicated and you to invest the time to search. I can post it as I do it on my blog but it is not something for this thread.

amother wrote:

also, if you want to do this again, say in a year from now, is it possible?

It depends on which cards you used this year and how good you were about it. I doubt you can do it every year because the deals are not always there and you cannot be opening and closing cards all the time. it makes credit issuers very suspicious of you. Your ability to do this also depends on your stage in life. If you are about to apply for a mortgage you don't want to increase your credit line by taking out two new cards. Many people only have rudimentary understanding about credit score (I cannot count the amount of people I know who don't want to open a cc because they think it is bad for their credit score. Instead they have a terrible credit score because they have no credit history, never having had a single cc or loan or line of credit in their lives. They get slammed when they go for a mortgage.). Therefore for most people I would not recommend doing this every year. Nor do I think it is normal to think you have to go to Israel every year. It is for a really special occasion so we all worked hard to make it affordable for the family members who needed assistance. But in general such high expectations for a trip every year is not good for a family. You'd do better selling your mileage and saving the cash in a Roth IRA.

amother wrote:

and, if the miles are all on your name- from your credit card- how do you transfer it to family members, to buy them tickets as well?
thanks

If the miles are in my name I call up and say I want to book a ticket for person x. You can use your miles to book tickets for other people. You do not want to be transferring miles if avoidable. They take a huge cut when they do that.

Tamiri

Tue, May 24 2011, 9:43 am

Jawscience, don't the free tran-Atlantic tickets still cost? They sure did when we were flying FF and I believe the fees have only gone up in recent years. Sadly, we have no more FF miles to redeem but we did 15 r/t tickets to Israel and many Continental flights back in the day.

happymom4

Tue, May 24 2011, 10:25 am

I may get blasted for this but I will put it out there anyways!
If someone works for a long time to save small amounts towards a "once in a lifetime" luxury, don't they have the right to choose what that luxury is? To be quite honest, tuition in most cities is out of hand (15,000 for first grade?). Our families grow up so fast & before you have a chance to look back , all those opportunities to create lifelong memories & instill a real feel for yiddishkiet are gone because we were all so busy running the rat race to pay tuition! Sometimes the things our children learn outside of the classroom ( a trip to chevron or beis lechem) can do more good than an entire year of being stuck in a desk! I don't know what your reasons are for feeling so strongly to use so much of your savings for this trip, but if you feel it will benefit your family, only you have a right to make that decision, definatley not a tuition board that is often comprised of people that were born with money & never had to struggle! Good luck with your decision!

shoshina

Tue, May 24 2011, 10:28 am

Happymom1,

Don't the people who are paying for OP's tuition also deserve to take their children on trips? But if everyone chooses trips over paying full tuition....who is going to subsidize those people who would rather take trips?

JAWSCIENCE

Tue, May 24 2011, 10:46 am

Tamiri wrote:

It depends on the airline. British air is terrible with fees so we always use british air miles to book on "partner" airlines that have low fees. For these Israel tickets - US to Israel - some of us are using american miles (and thus flying elal I think) and some are using continental. Fees were actually pretty low this time. I think we paid 100$ for DH and myself. so that's 50$ a ticket. Not bad. You have to look around to be sure to find the best airline fees and gear your miles towards that.

Now you also have to be wise about when you book. Booking in a popular time right before that time is going to be tough. You have to book waaay in advance.

happymom4

Tue, May 24 2011, 11:12 am

Shoshina:

The problem with "full tuition" is that the amounts don't just pay for 1 child's education...in many schools it covers 3! if someone gets a "scholarship" & owes blood sweat & tears to pay a humble amount ($10,000.00 per child instead of the full amount of $15,000.00) & has hopefully a few children to send to school, they will never have any other opportunities! The only pp that suffer from the tuition problem are the pp that make a respectable income but not enough to cover the outrageous price tag yeshivas have attached to education! Many that can afford full tuition +, forget that there is an obligation to help out those that truly need assistance. On the other side of the spectrum, we have a wonderful community of families that choose to take the "high road" & immerse themselves in kedusha all day but their kolel paychecks can't possibly cover tuition ever! So who hurts most? The middle man. Hard working, educated but not born with a silver spoon, this is the group hardest hit by the big bill. This is the group that may be able to hold their own but cannot take on the burden if another family without drowning. & that is what "full tuition" makes them feel like. So this questionable vacation may be perfectly affordable to this particular family if schools didn't expect unreasonable tuition amounts from them in the first place!

Tamiri

Tue, May 24 2011, 11:25 am

happymom4 wrote:

My family was there as far as mid-level income ($135k). And you know what? We DIDN'T send our kids to day camp most years and never all of them in one summer. We DIDN'T go on vacations if they cost money. And you know what? Our ENTIRE family lives in Israel. We NEVER took thousands of dollars for a trip. If that meant that our first trip back to Israel was after 6!!!! years in the U.S., when family finally paid our way, so be it. And if it meant my husband doing backward somersaults and more to amass points for FF miles so we could go to Israel - so be it! And if it meant that while in Israel we couldn't rent a car - so be it! And so on. In fact one year we were here, we got to Mesada and saw what it cost to ride up the cable car, we turned around (family car) and headed right back to where we had come from. To the OP: don't kid yourself: Israel is VERY expensive, especially with the week dollar. Food, entertainment - everything is an arm and a leg.
One year when we lived in the US, we had enough FF miles and Hotel points and car rental points to cover a trip to Disney and we'd have had to add just $1000. Trip of a lifetime, right? We just couldn't do it. Because the school was extending us that $1000 to cover the tuition we could not afford to pay in full. If we could find $1000 for a trip to Disney ONCE IN A LIFETIME TRIP, we owed that money to the school. School comes first. There is no rule that a family "deserves" a vacation, once they decided that the children "deserve" a day school education. All bets are off once the family makes their mind up. And they have to pay for it. You don't go to a supermarket and and tell them their food is too expensive, give me a break and then go out and eat ice cream at Carvel's because you "deserve" it, do you?

aidelmaidel

Tue, May 24 2011, 11:34 am

To the poster who says their schools ask to see your numbers before they give you a tuition figure - how is that possible????

The school's lack of transparency is troubling.

Our school has a set tuition, $7900 plus fees. After that you go forward. Some people pay full tuition, but most people negotiate. If you have 6 kids at ~$8000 each, there are few families that can afford $48000 in tuition.

I know in Baltimore, the schools there use some online system where everyone enters their tax information into a website, and the information is securely passed off to the scholarship committee. (This is not to say that this is a mechaya for those "off the books" or "Cash Business"). But when the committee has everyone's information in one place (and I'm sure the website can "score" applicants), it makes it a lot easier to make decisions.

ora_43

Tue, May 24 2011, 11:50 am

Are all the amothers talking about tuition breaks and going to Israel the same person?

If so, I'd say that while normally it wouldn't be right to take a $5,000 vacation, it sounds like you aren't really spending $5,000 on vacation. If that sum includes things like food or gas costs that you'd have anyway, I think it's fair to not include those.

And like previous posters said, ask your rav, and ask the tuition board. But IMHO you don't have to put it as "can we take a $5,000 vacation," but more, "We have an opportunity to fly to Israel to visit family for free. We estimate that we'll save $1,000 on camp costs, but will need to spend $3,000 on extra expenses while there." (Don't mention the food costs - you'd be eating in America too).

I would also suggest thinking of ways to save money on the trip. If you don't have hotel costs or airplane ticket costs, there should be a way to cut costs to less than $5,000. Maybe start a separate thread for cheap vacation ideas?

JAWSCIENCE

Tue, May 24 2011, 12:15 pm

Tamiri wrote:

happymom4 wrote:

Amen to this!

If you have a problem with the way your school is bundling scholarships into your tuition the solution is not to go ask for a scholarship yourself or sneak around with you money furthering this issue for others who are not willing to do the same and will instead scrimp and kill themsleves to cover Your tuition. The solution is to either vote with your feet and go elsewhere or form a committee or like mineded parents who demand transparancy about what goes into a tuition bill so excess costs in administrative areas can be cut and things like scholarships can be done separately so you can get appropriate maaser breaks and possibly even tax breaks if they stop making it "mandatory" and instead make it very strongly suggested.

What is with all this" we are entitled to luxury this and that" talk. If you are entitled then use YOUR OWN money for it not scholarship money. Even if you think it is only going to support another persons kid, you are not fixing the problem. Your just passing the ever increasing buck onto the next poor working shmoe who isn't willing to play the same games or con the system. It's slipperly slope.

As for kollel driving tuition up, people are allowed to be moser their own nefesh for kolel. They should not be allowed to be moser other people's neffashos or the nefashos of their kids. lots of us would love a kolel lifestyle but we realized that while we are able bodied and capable it is our obligation to pay our bills and feed our kids nobody else's. Not the government and not my neighbour. If you can afford kollel gezunta heit, but please do not force the rest of us to afford it for you. We will nevr be able to have a school a mikvah or any other community mosdos if we all got to live out our dream of being in kolel. It's sad but it is reality. We are in goluls and we have the curse of adam to earn our bread with our sweat. It is hard enough to support those who are truly needy (lost a job looking for a new one, mentaly diasbled, elderly, yisomim, almanos etc) without young able bodied people who refuse to even try to look for income adding themselves to this list.

We are neither entitled to learn in kolel or to have luxuries even if we work hard. We are entitled to put in apropriate histadlus and to take whatever hashem has rewarded this histadlus with and use it to meet our obligations. then we are entitled to spend anythjing that may be left over as we see fit. May we all be in such a rare situation.....

happymom4

Tue, May 24 2011, 12:59 pm

Tamiri & Jawscience...happy to all think the same on this topic...if only we could do something about it Very Happy

Hashem_Yaazor

Tue, May 24 2011, 1:06 pm

I'll have you know that according to many school administrators, full tuition is enough for ONE child. The tuition is not raised higher to pay for others on scholarship.
That's where the fundraising comes in.

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