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Re: Best preschools
When I mean sacrifice I mean personal ones where you put off your own agendas like college or career to fund your children's education. My wife dropped out of college to raise five out of six of our boys. I quit my highly paid, secured job of 22-years to raise number 6,that's sacrifice. We rented so we could live in safe neighborhoods conducive to good schools and we paid high rent as a result. We bought used cars instead of new, ate Hamburger Helper not once but many times a week. I would eat after the kids ate so I knew they would have enough to eat. Sometimes their hungry appetites left nothing so I'm raiding the cereal box for a late night dinner. We were and still are frequent shoppers at the Salvation Army instead of the Gap. We fundraise for our kids events not simply pay for the entire box of Worlds Finest chocolates, hitting all of my co workers.
That's sacrifice. Sacrifice also included working two sometimes three jobs so my wife could stay home and raise the kids and eventually use that time to go back to school to complete her degree program. I never saw my kids anymore working 14-hour days seven days a week. My mantra was always, I'm doing this for my family. That's sacrifice.
So how do you ask did I balance this workload and still maintain a healthy family lifestyle? Yes the workday was 14-hours long but there's still ten of those that you can use, so on weekend nights when the kids don't have to go to school, they'd stay up late when I got home and we'd spend the evening outside counting stars, roasting marshmellows over a cheap hibachi from Longs Drugs, going to the evening walks at the zoo. Staying up late even though I had to wake up at 4am Saturday morning to go to job number 3 knowing that I wouldn't come home until 8pm the following evening for another round of marshmellows.
Investment is when you take something beneficial and apply it. But when your financial resources are strained, it takes sacrifice to afford the capacity to invest. The problem with middle-class people like myself is that there are very little programs out there to assist us financially for things like food, shelter, transportation and education. We are the gap group yet we make those sacrifices to ensure our kids get the best we can offer with what we have.
Rich people don't have to worry about investment, poor people have subsidies to fall onto when they cannot make those ends meet. Middle class renters like myself at that time had no opportunity except to keep treading water. You can't pay that rent, sorry there's no section 8 to bail you out.
But we put ourselves into that position not because we couldn't afford the luxuries of a better lifestyle, we did it because we focused our finances on our kids education. The thought of home ownership was always fleeting. The thought of buying a new car always crossed my mind everytime I was under the hood of my Buick stationwagon fixing the fuel pump.
But thru it all we managed to send our children to Oahu's best preschool so they could get the best pre-ed we could afford and we afforded the best simply thru hard work and lots of sacrifice. The reward was the investment, the path was thru sacrifice.
Anyone can invest in their children's education, but with limited resources one has to sacrifice a lifestyle to fund another. We put our kids future ahead of our own materialistic wants and yes it has paid off.
When I mean sacrifice I mean personal ones where you put off your own agendas like college or career to fund your children's education. My wife dropped out of college to raise five out of six of our boys. I quit my highly paid, secured job of 22-years to raise number 6,that's sacrifice. We rented so we could live in safe neighborhoods conducive to good schools and we paid high rent as a result. We bought used cars instead of new, ate Hamburger Helper not once but many times a week. I would eat after the kids ate so I knew they would have enough to eat. Sometimes their hungry appetites left nothing so I'm raiding the cereal box for a late night dinner. We were and still are frequent shoppers at the Salvation Army instead of the Gap. We fundraise for our kids events not simply pay for the entire box of Worlds Finest chocolates, hitting all of my co workers.
That's sacrifice. Sacrifice also included working two sometimes three jobs so my wife could stay home and raise the kids and eventually use that time to go back to school to complete her degree program. I never saw my kids anymore working 14-hour days seven days a week. My mantra was always, I'm doing this for my family. That's sacrifice.
So how do you ask did I balance this workload and still maintain a healthy family lifestyle? Yes the workday was 14-hours long but there's still ten of those that you can use, so on weekend nights when the kids don't have to go to school, they'd stay up late when I got home and we'd spend the evening outside counting stars, roasting marshmellows over a cheap hibachi from Longs Drugs, going to the evening walks at the zoo. Staying up late even though I had to wake up at 4am Saturday morning to go to job number 3 knowing that I wouldn't come home until 8pm the following evening for another round of marshmellows.
Investment is when you take something beneficial and apply it. But when your financial resources are strained, it takes sacrifice to afford the capacity to invest. The problem with middle-class people like myself is that there are very little programs out there to assist us financially for things like food, shelter, transportation and education. We are the gap group yet we make those sacrifices to ensure our kids get the best we can offer with what we have.
Rich people don't have to worry about investment, poor people have subsidies to fall onto when they cannot make those ends meet. Middle class renters like myself at that time had no opportunity except to keep treading water. You can't pay that rent, sorry there's no section 8 to bail you out.
But we put ourselves into that position not because we couldn't afford the luxuries of a better lifestyle, we did it because we focused our finances on our kids education. The thought of home ownership was always fleeting. The thought of buying a new car always crossed my mind everytime I was under the hood of my Buick stationwagon fixing the fuel pump.
But thru it all we managed to send our children to Oahu's best preschool so they could get the best pre-ed we could afford and we afforded the best simply thru hard work and lots of sacrifice. The reward was the investment, the path was thru sacrifice.
Anyone can invest in their children's education, but with limited resources one has to sacrifice a lifestyle to fund another. We put our kids future ahead of our own materialistic wants and yes it has paid off.
I'm back to using the word "sacrifice". That's what I did when I moved to Makaha. I "sacrificed" living close to my work, friends, social life and having more interior space in order to live oceanfront; my dream. That was affordable for me in Makaha and the Waianae Coast wasn't considered a good investment. Oddly enough it didn't turn out to be a sacrifice at all. It was the best decision I've ever made! And now, after living here for over 13 years, it's even a good investment! 
and what are the current tuition rates?
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