Financial Sanity

<p>skafe, how much can you expect to earn (net income before tax) for running a franchise, assuming it’s in a reasonable location?</p>

<p>This line of thought is too calculating for me. Sending one’s child to boarding school is an immeasurable present. To look for a concrete ROI seems misguided in this application. Either you decide to go ahead with it taking a small leap of faith, or you decide that it’s simply too expensive and you’re uneasy because it’s impossible to quantify future results. For your child’s sake, it’s important to let them know what an incredible opportunity they have before them and that they should take advantage of it, etc. but if you plan to berate them about their choice of college major, what you see as a less-than-acceptable starting salary, their choice of career, etc., I think it’s better not to head down this road, because you sound begrudging and resentful before you’ve even sent in a deposit check! For all you know, you’re putting them on the road to being an English major at Swarthmore. Horrors! Public high school and the Subway franchise as a graduation present sound like a safer bet for you.</p>

<p>I’ve heard of those low investment franchises. $15K won’t even buy the equipment (refrigeration, oven, etc.) necessary for a gas station Subway. What they offer you with one of those franchises is a crummy location (podunk gas station) where you lease the equipment from them, lease the square footage from the gas station, and you basically pay for the signage to set it up. You pay a percentage (I can’t remember but it is between 3 and 5% of gross) to Subway on top of the leases for the equipment and the square footage. Yeah, a mom and pop can run one and eek out a living, but that is hardly what I’d want to choose as an alternative career for myself or my child.</p>

<p>Taking your $380K (and subtract out $80K for a 4 year public college including R&B because s/he is going to need SOME education to be able to run the place) and that $300K might get your kid a franchise at a 2nd tier operation (FYI - McDonalds only sells franchises to experienced restaurant managers (McDonalds preferred) after the attend their school). Most top franchise operations don’t want to risk their good name on inexperienced operators. So lets say your kid worked part time at Mickey D’s during his HS and college years and then spent his first year out of school managing a Mickey D’s. You put up the $300K and get a struggling store because that is what you get for that kind of money.</p>

<p>I hope your kid has been watching the Apprentice, because he is going to need some tips from the Donald himself to turn around one of these stores. There is a big difference between following the routines of a well-managed restaurant and trying to sort out the personnel issues of a dysfunctional store full of semi-literate kids with criminal records. Yeah in todays job market, you could replace them with unemployed ex-investment bankers, but quite frankly, you’d get better fries from the ex-cons.</p>

<p>I wouldn’t bet on a young kid making it in such a situation.</p>

<p>Strangely enough, I know just enough about restaurants that I have a healthy respect for the folks who take it on. I spent my high school years and college summers working in an independent pizza place. I learned plenty on the job, as the owner basically had me design and spec out his second operation from an empty store front. I applied everything I knew about operations management (my specialty in Business School) to creating a smooth workflow kitchen with minimal wasted movement, even considering the opportunities for menu expansion in my basic design.</p>

<p>The restaurant was quite successful for the owner, as he was quite good at finding good reliable workers (I have a lot of respect for that).</p>

<p>After about 10 years though, he decided that he wanted to spend more time with his children, so if you can believe this he went to work in a brokerage. If that doesn’t tell you how many hours a restaurant takes to run successfully, nothing will. He was just happy that he could work at home on weekends and see his kids a couple of days a week.</p>

<p>If you want a business that takes little talent to run (and basically can be run absentee), try a minimal-service car-wash. You can tell if people are cheating you by your water consumption when compared to the receipts. You probably still need to do some spot checking, but all in all it is a far simpler operation to manage. If you made a good market analysis on location and own you own location, it can be a steady business with relatively few risks.</p>

<p>Personally, even with today’s markets, I’d still take the money and buy your kid a maxed-out Roth IRA every year until you run out of money, if I didn’t think the additional cost of a private education warranted the expenditure.</p>

<p>In our case we are not spending anywhere near that much, so our ROI is quite good. FA is a wonderful thing…</p>

<p>As I said earlier, YMMV.</p>

<p>Yeah…</p>

<p>I don’t even know how to respond to the idea that education is a somehow a means to an end. </p>

<p>To me, that is the greatest poverty.</p>

<p>My apologies if I sound harsh. I just cannot relate at all.</p>

<p>I appreciate skafe’s questions though the franchise comparison doesn’t convince. Parents send their kids to top secondary schools for many reasons, but I think the best one is simply that they know their kids will get tremendous joy out of the experience. Many years ago I taught at one of the best boarding schools in the country and one of my all-time favorite students went on to a top Ivy League school. A month after graduating he went to Africa for a safari and died in a car crash. The news was shocking, and I thought how hard it must have been for his parents. A well-meaning friend joined me in my mourning and wondered how odd it must have been for these parents to have put their son through 8 years of private education and then see all that knowledge vanish. His comment made me realize that those parents probably had no regrets. Their son was a kind, vibrant, intellectual powerhouse, and he surely enjoyed those eight years as much as they enjoyed providing those environments for him. I think the college/ networking/ income potential advantages are too ill-defined to be useful in a cost benefit analysis. You look at your kid and wonder how much she or he will throw themselves into this experience with gratitude, wonder, and awe.</p>

<p>BoardingDad that was eloquent and beautiful. I can relate.</p>

<p>This is a little comment about BS finances. If you are able to either pay full out for BS or are awarded FA and so are able to send your child to one of these wonderful schools, I will tell you that you will not believe how much less expensive it is to have a child away at school than living in your home (lol). The savings on car insurance and gas alone is staggering, not to mention that she tends to spend about $10 a month (yes a month) on incidentals at BS. All her food and entertainment is paid for by the school. No costs for concerts, dances, lectures, festivities, athletic events, movies, you name it. No longer will you be nickeled and dimed to death! Yes there are airline tickets and fees for shuttles to the airport, but our experience has been that they have to actually look for ways to try to spend money there.</p>

<p>This is a horrible time to consider franchises. Many business, especially restaurants, will go under the next few years.</p>

<p>Boarding school is right for my oldest child. It might not be for the others. If you are estimating the potential future financial impact for today’s decisions, I expect that true fluency in a foreign language (I’m biased to think Mandarin and Spanish are most important) will be a key factor, which boarding schools should provide.</p>

<p>Wow, I am humbled by the sheer volume and quality of discussion in this thread. My thanks to all, especially goalliedad and boardingDad, whose analysis, one practical (“physical”) and the other “metaphysical,” were perfect bookends for this forum. In the end, I was interested in promoting debate, perspective, independent thinking and yes, answers. I think I accomplished my goal.
As for me personally, I am happy to report that my daughter was accepted to SEVEN boarding schools!! We are now in the process of deciding to which one she will go to. Thank you all for participating in my round table.</p>

<p>Hi skafe, I am glad my ‘metaphysical’ response was helpful! In the spirit of full disclosure, though, I should report that my son was accepted at the one school he applied to but without financial aid. I’ve lamented this situation elsewhere on CC, but faced with close to $40,000 tuition payments over the next four years, I am looking at your question with new pragmatism. I know my son would throw himself into the BS experience, but I also know he’d like to have some funds for college and for the rest of us to have a place to live. 2nd mortgages and the like seem awfully risky in these times. So he may be headed to our good public school unless the school can put something together. So it goes – Melville went on a whaling voyage for his Harvard and Yale.</p>

<p>Putting “Financial Sanity” on a Prep school board is a kind of oxymoron. The two do not have a logical connection.</p>

<p>We are driven to apply to elite schools, as a bird seeks out those with the most colorful plumage. It’s DNA, not logic.</p>

<p>I think I might be in a good position to answer this question. I’m a boarding school grad myself, and went on to an Ivy League college.</p>

<p>Boarding school definitely taught me many important values, like the value of the arts and of making a positive contribution to society.</p>

<p>I’d have to say that I’m probably a poster child for the kind of person my boarding school says that they want to produce: I’ve spent my entire career serving the underserved: I started in the Peace Corps and then went into health care where I’ve always worked in under served communities. In addition, I’m a nationally known known in a creative field.</p>

<p>Here’s the rub. My career and my husband’s (a teacher) are not the kind of careers that make boarding-school worthy salaries. </p>

<p>My kid, a legacy, got rejected-- sure he wasn’t probably the top candidate, but I’m pretty sure he would have been in the right ballpark if he hadn’t needed financial aid.</p>

<p>I would have to say that a HIGH proportion of my friends from both BS and Ivy League went into professions that showed a lot about their values and did not have getting rich as a primary objective. I have many friends who are creative artists, or who work in jobs that are good for society rather than good for the pocket book. Why? I think in no small part it’s because of the fine liberal arts education we received.</p>

<p>The values I learned started in BS, but I regret that I’m not in a financial position to pass that legacy on to my kids.</p>

<p>PGMom,
It is paradoxical, isn’t it? You base your life on the values that the schools profess (non sibi) and then they penalize you for it. I would be bitter.</p>

<p>Ditto, neatoburrito. These kinds of discussions just leave me shaking my head. Just me, I guess (and you!).</p>

<p>Boarding school admissions on the whole now have become very paradoxical. Wait until you apply to Ivies. The criteria if you are not the son/daughter of a $$ supporting alumni are almost impossible to grasp. I doubt FDR (who wasn’t a D1 athlete or a Concert pianist) would have gotten into Harvard without his family $$ and legacy behind him. You can name many Ivy grads that went on to shape and form this country who would never have been admitted today due to $finances$ or lack of a SPECTACULAR TALENT!!:):).
This has been going on for 25+ years now, so we will/are seeing the results of this change of admission policies now in our USofA. Anyone want to write a thesis on it?</p>

<p>Another interesting but out of context :
[China</a> not fooling in call for review of dollar’s status - MarketWatch](<a href=“http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/china-not-fooling-call-review/story.aspx?guid={2A51BB30-F103-4F34-AD1C-443F4315B370}]China”>http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/china-not-fooling-call-review/story.aspx?guid={2A51BB30-F103-4F34-AD1C-443F4315B370})</p>

<p>China wants to be “Boss” and so it goes…" He that controls the gold, controls the rules" ~ Golden rule of Business.</p>