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Comment by whimsicalism | Hacker News Reader

Uh, no - there is no way paying for an urban day school through 401k withdrawals makes any financial sense.

Right I think they're saying that someone's social/family/community life is more complex than a financial calculation. It's not about making this "make sense" in terms of endorsing it as an outsider, but about understanding what circumstances would lead to someone feeling like this makes sense for them.

I don't disagree that the person feels that this makes sense for them, but I am not confusing how this person feels with what they ought to be doing.

At the limit case (and withdrawing from your 401k to support your 6 children going to private school is definitely a limit case), you can absolutely reason about what 'makes sense' and this simply is not it.

If it leads to your kids into an upper echelon college like Harvard, which then sets up their trajectory for a very lucrative career, it seems entirely sane to me. The lifetime earning potential of a Harvard grad and chance of being the President is so much higher than someone who dropped out and maybe managed to get a GED later on in lift that it's not even funny.

Millions of families make this reasoning and spend $30k or more per year and per kid from age 2. Very few of these kids make it to Harvard or other top 4 colleges, maybe 1 will become president.

Sane Western countries have free and decent public education; and parents can't withdraw their future retirement early to fund dreams.

Not only is that a ridiculous long-tail reason to send your kids to private school, it is not actually clear that (once you account for selection effects) it is easier to get into Harvard from some private school than public school.

Your kid can go to an inner city public school, complete with going through a metal detector and x-ray every day, and go to Harvard. It's not likely, but it wasn't likely in the other school either.

> The lifetime earning potential of a Harvard grad and chance of being the President is so much higher

You've misunderstood the cause/effect here. The kinds of people who go to Harvard (i.e., rich and/or smart young people) are indeed more likely to make more money and be elected president. But Harvard itself isn't what made it happen. It was being rich and/or smart.

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