Have you thought about the costs of education?

It’s easy to comprehend the crippling effect of student loans, or sympathize with parents over escalating school fees reported in the news. But do you know what education really costs?

According to a study released by HSBC, sending a child to school in the UAE, from primary to university, will cost about $99,378 (Dh365,025), the second highest in the world.

School fees in Dubai average from Dh12,761 to Dh65,152 per annum, not including additional fees for admission, transportation, school uniforms, books and extra curricular activities.

In the UK, parents of international students can expect to pay a premium on university fees. In 2017, the University of Edinburgh charged between £16,650 and £23,200 per annum undergraduate international students.

If you think that your children will be fine thanks to student loans, think again. Your children would have had to have been “ordinarily resident in the UK” for the full three-year period before the first day of the first academic year of their university programme.

It doesn’t stop there: not only will they, as “international students”, be expected to pay over twice as much in annual fees than their UK resident cousins, but they’re also unlikely to qualify for UK government-sponsored financial student support, such as tuition fee loans, or, because of their British passports, qualify for certain scholarships and grants that are otherwise available to international students studying in the UK.

An overseas student undergraduate medical degree can cost up to £38,000 per year. These figures don’t account for cost of living expenses and student union outgoings!

Safe to say education costs are going to be a significant chunk of your household expenditure.

We often have clients who’s children show great potential in a particular field, be it sport or music. Recently, one of our clients 18 year olds was accepted onto a college golf program in the USA. They couldn’t afford the costs and unfortunately the opportunity of a future HSBC Abu Dhabi Champion had to be missed.

A typical client who comes to us early and, for example, has 2 children aged 3 and 5, could start saving every month into a structured investment plan. Within 10 years they will have a healthy pot and will be stress free over what options will be available for their children.

Clearly planning ahead is vital, so that you don’t have to make financial sacrifices when it comes time to enroll your children in nursery!

Options range from traditional savings methods, to trusts, to tax incentive plans to pre-paid tuition and more.