How do you pay for your children's education without selling investments at the wrong moment?

Fund it separately, from a dedicated pot, in the currency the fees are charged in. Education is a big bill with fixed dates, so it shouldn't compete with your retirement money or come out of monthly income. For two children, the total can reach between $900,000 and $1.4m.

Here's the usual story. Education gets treated as a monthly cost, taken out of income. Then comes the year two children are at university at once, and the portfolio gets sold at exactly the wrong moment to pay for it.

How big is the number?

Bigger than most people expect. Here's a representative case: two children, now aged 4 and 7. International school in the Gulf or Singapore from reception to eighteen, then a three-year UK undergraduate degree as an overseas student.

• International school fees: roughly $25,000-$40,000 per child per year, before capital levies, transport and trips.
• UK university as an overseas student: £25,000-£40,000 tuition plus £15,000-£20,000 living costs, per child per year.
• UK private day school, if the family moves back: now materially higher following the addition of VAT to fees in 2025.

Education costs tend to rise faster than everyday prices (general CPI, the standard measure of inflation). Inflate them at a realistic 5-6% a year and the total for two children lands between $900,000 and $1.4m in nominal terms. "Nominal" just means in future money, not today's.

Put another way, it's a mortgage paid off over fifteen years, only with no lender involved.

Why should education have its own pot?

Because the bills have dates you can't move. Retirement is flexible: you can work a bit longer or spend a bit less. Fees aren't. The dates are known to the month, and the school won't negotiate. You can't ask a university to wait two years because markets fell 30%.

So the answer is a dedicated pot with a "glidepath", which means the investments get safer on a schedule as the bills get closer. Here's how it works:

• While the bills are years away, hold growth assets.
• Then de-risk step by step.
• Each academic year's fees should sit in cash or short-duration bonds (bonds that repay soon, so they swing less in price) by the September eighteen months before they're due.

Also, hold the pot in the currency of the fees. A dollar portfolio set against sterling tuition is an unhedged bet on a date you can't move. In other words, you're gambling on the exchange rate, and the casino doesn't let you reschedule.

Which tax wrappers fit?

A "wrapper" is the account or structure the money sits in, which decides who owns it and how it's taxed. There are five worth knowing.

• Grandparent contributions. Often the most efficient route. Gifts out of surplus income are immediately outside the estate (what's counted for inheritance taxInheritance tax (IHT)Tax on what you leave behind when you die. In the UK it now follows long-term residence rather than domicile.) where properly documented. Paying a school directly can be structured as a normal expenditure gift.
• Bare trusts and designated accounts. Simple, and tax-efficient in many jurisdictions because income and gains are the child's. But the child takes control at majority (the age of legal adulthood). That's a feature for some families and a problem for others.
• Discretionary trusts. You keep control and get flexibility across siblings, at the cost of complexity and trust tax rates.
• UK Junior ISAs (tax-free children's savings accounts) where a child qualifies, subject to residence conditions.
• Offshore bondsOffshore bondAn investment held inside a life insurance policy issued by an insurer based outside your home country., where the 5% annual withdrawal allowance and assignment to an adult child in a lower bracket can be genuinely useful. But only outside a commission-loaded contract.

What mistakes do we see most often?

Four come up again and again.

Funding from income only. It works until it doesn't. The classic failure is a business slowdown in the same years two sets of fees fall due.

One pot for everything. Retirement and education compete, and education always wins in the moment. Separate accounts create separate discipline.

Ignoring the university currency. Families in the Gulf frequently plan in dollars for sterling liabilities. A 15% currency move is a year of tuition.

Leaving it too late to be tax-efficient. Most of the useful structures (regular gifts out of income, bare trusts, insurance) depend on time. At five years to first fees, the options narrow to saving harder.

What do we do about it?

We build a fee model by child, by school year, in the fee currency. Then we design a glidepath and a set of wrappers to match.

It's a written-fee piece of work with no hourly billing, usually a fortnight. It typically changes the family's monthly savings target, up or down, by more than any investment decision they'll make that decade.