Homeschoolers take a triple whammy when it comes to funding education. How’s that? First your real estate taxes go toward funding the local public school even though your kids don’t attend. Next, you don’t get a tax credit to offset your contribution. Finally, no matter how diligent you are in cutting costs, you’ll have to spend some out-of-pocket cash to homeschool your kids. How much can you expect to spend?
Vicky Bentley, Early Years Coordinator for HSLDA, pulled together her own spending estimates for her three kids and came up with an annual cost of less than $ 500 per kid in her article, What Does it Cost to Homeschool? Over half of her cost was curriculum with the rest from school supplies, professional memberships, conventions, and standardized testing.
On the extreme end of the scale, a California survey in the mid-1990s indicated that after initial start-up costs of around $ 400, the average annual cost for those families was $ 2800. Granted, well over half of that estimate involved classes outside the home which are completely discretionary. So taking the cost of classes out of the equation, the California cost drops to $ 1200 per year. So let’s agree on a range of $ 500-$ 1200 per year per child. If you have a big family like my friend Gwen (she homeschooled all 12 of her kids!), you’d need a pretty big piggy bank to cover the costs of homeschooling. How can you homeschool on a tight budget?
- Borrow books from the library and friends.
- Resell your books online or at used curriculum fairs.
- Download free curriculum from the internet.
- Barter with friends for curriculum and teaching swaps.
- Share the cost of expensive items like microscopes with other families.
- Teach the same subject to kids who are close in age.
- Recycle paper.
- Purchase school supplies from the local dollar store.
- Return used ink cartridges to the office supply store for future credit.
- Share travel expenses with other families for field trips and competitions.
- Barter your services for private lessons.
- Visit garage sales for gently-used desks and bookcases.
- Share homeschooling magazine subscriptions with friends.
- Download open source software or shareware for your computer’s utility programs or games.
- Take advantage of school and teacher discounts at museums, printing shops, and clothing stores.
- Combine vacation with field trips.
- Scour garage sales, print classified ads, and online sites for a recent encyclopedia set.
- Watch documentaries on television and internet sources like Annenberg Media and National Geographic.
- Download more than 36,000 books from the Gutenberg Project.
- Instead of using expensive pre-packaged curricula, use real books and nature studies.
What other ideas do you have for cutting homeschooling costs? The good news is this: you have complete control over how little or how much you spend, and the ultimate reward is definitely worth the cost! Be creative, and don’t let money get in the way of fulfilling your destiny.
