Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Approaching the new school year, quite a few private schools are offering discounts on initial fees (early bird). Not infrequently, the discount can be above 10% of the normal cost.
It's no secret that children's school fees always experience inflation every year. It is not uncommon for financial experts to say that the increase in education costs, especially initial fees, reaches 10 to 15% every year.
So, what if you as a parent are offered an early bird discount on the registration fee but unfortunately, your savings are not enough to pay for it. Should you go into debt, or ignore this one opportunity? The following is the explanation.
Ideally, the starting money is ready well in advance
Not only are there monetary discounts related to registration fees, one advantage of registering children to school early is to secure the availability of student seats at school.
Ideally, this money has been collected at least two months before school registration opens. If your child enters school in 2025, then in at least 10 months you must have enough money to pay the registration fee or take advantage of early bird.
If your child is entering school this year and the money has not yet been collected, then there are two things you can do to take advantage of the early bird, namely using available emergency fund savings, or if there are no emergency funds, you can apply for a loan.
The risk of borrowing funds is certainly greater than using emergency funds. However, you certainly have to be able to ensure that even though the funds are used for early birds, there is still some left over to anticipate other unexpected expenses.
If borrowing funds is something you have to do, then try to pay it off immediately in the next month and avoid converting debt for this expenditure over a long term.
The reason to avoid this is because there are many hidden costs in children's education. When you decide to convert debt to installments, there will be an increase in the amount of routine expenses every month.
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