Generally, no. Tuition you pay out of pocket, private K-12 or college, does not count in your debt-to-income ratio. Underwriters count monthly debt obligations: accounts that report on your credit, plus certain fixed obligations like alimony or child support. Tuition is a living expense you could stop paying (a family could switch to public school), so it sits outside the ratio the way groceries or child care do. The exceptions run on the same logic. Tuition financed with a loan that reports on your credit counts like any other installment debt. Voluntary transfers that only show on your bank statements (sending a parent money each month with no signed agreement) do not count; a payment tied to a signed lease does. One practical caution. Underwriting ignoring tuition does not mean your budget should. Most families treat private tuition as a fixed, non-negotiable bill, so it is smart to buy more conservatively than the DTI on paper allows. The ratio tells the lender you qualify. Whether the payment feels comfortable next to a monthly tuition check is a separate question, and that is the one that keeps you in the home. To see how your real obligations shape your qualifying range, we can walk through it on the free Roadmap conversation.