How do parents afford to homeschool their children?
June 7, 2009 by Homeschooling Support and Curriculum Tips
Filed under More Homeschooling Answers
Can you answer Blue Coral’s question about Homeschooling?:
If a family is not wealthy and living on one income, how do they afford to homeschool their children? Do they get a stipend from the state government per child? If so, does that differ according to state? What about Minnesota, where I live? Is there a website with this information on it?
If a family is not wealthy and living on one income, how do they afford to homeschool their children? Do they get a stipend from the state government per child? If so, does that differ according to state? What about Minnesota, where I live? Is there a website with this information on it?
Homeschooling Feedback: Most places do not have any funding available whatsoever to parents. Where I live, there’s a tiny bit of funding: $715 or something like that next year per child. Hardly worth writing home about.
I know single parents who somehow manage to homeschool their children; I know families who live in an apartment and the parents don’t have great jobs and they still manage to homeschool. My husband and I definitely are not wealthy. It usually means cutting back a lot on things to be able to have one parent home. You spend less here and there and there and it adds up. Less travelling to work and school means more gas money saved–and less wear on the car. (Of course, I know families who have decided to go without a car or only have one car.) The kids aren’t as focused on fashions and wanting the latest brands. Some families buy a lot of their clothes at second-hand stores. There are lots of ways to reduce expenses.
For some people, there really doesn’t seem to be a way to make it happen, but most families who really want to homeschool find a way to make it happen.
Homeschooling Feedback: In Indiana it was far less expensive to home school that it was when my son was in public school. The book fees and registration fees alone were almost $1000.00 per year in our district. My son’s curriculum for his last year were only $150.00. Many of the public libraries have the text books used in the public schools. There are also websites where you can print worksheets. If you google home schooling you will find a lot of information.
Homeschooling Feedback: No. Home school parents do not get a stipend from their state. The major expense that these parents have is not earning a salary from a paying job. Yet these parents have a value system that says that their children’s education is more important than having a two parent income. That is their choice.
Homeschooling Feedback: There are no stipends in most states. Our children are more important than the bigger house, newer car, clothes from the mall, etc. Although we are probably considered upper-middle income, we must budget, and be conservative to not need a second income. You can spend a little or a lot on curriculum. We don’t view a lot of things as necessities, while those with two incomes do. I know a woman who “has” to work or her son wouldn’t be able to play traveling soccer. Meanwhile, he only sees her for about an hour a day during the week, and they are gone almost every weekend during soccer season. They don’t even sleep in the same room as him those weekends. It’s really sad, their parent/child relationship… they hardly know each other.
Homeschooling Feedback: As the others have said, it’s all a matter of choices. It’s what’s best for our kids, so we make it work.
My husband works two jobs and I teach private classes and tutor on the side. I’m also a curriculum rep at homeschool conventions for a couple of months each year, so that helps. I put more time than money into my son’s curriculum and find everything possible for free or at a discount. It means a bit less sleep and free time for me, but his education is worth it.
He barely even knows what Hollister and Abercrombie are, and honestly, he doesn’t care. He doesn’t mind not having 38 PS2 games at his disposal, and he loves the library. Best of all, he actually likes hanging out with us. He loves going on trips with his grandparents. He enjoys playing with friends that he picks from all over town, rather than just his classroom. To me, this is worth the occasional financial strain.
No, there’s no stipend, as the government basically has no say in how you educate your child. Depending on your state, you may still have to do testing or an evaluation, but that’s it. Since they have no say, they also don’t allot any funding toward it. In the end, though, I (and all hs families I know) would rather have the freedom to raise our kids than the government’s help in doing so.
Hope that helps!
Edit - I agree with Thrice Blessed. That $715 would easily pay for our homeschooling year! (glurpy’s in Canada, no state in the US gives money back.) However, knowing the government in the US, lots of restrictions would come with that. I’m willing (not happy, but willing) to consider the money well spent and keep our freedoms. Like she said, we just make it work.
Homeschooling Feedback: It doesn’t have to be expensive. My family is low income and my mother is widdowed. We afford to homeschool by making use of e-bay and amazon used books and other websites and organizations that sell or trade used homeschool curriculum and supplies. I’m studying 10 different subjects this year, several with lots of labs and hands-on projects and activities, and we got all we need for the year for less than $300, and we certainly weren’t settling for less. We decided what we wanted and then shopped, searched, anad asked around until we found it at the most afordable price. Some things didn’t require pay at all. We used library books, traded materials with other homeschoolers, borrowed books and materials, took advantage of household items, community resources, sales at book and school supply stores, free online resources, computer downloads, Back-to-school sales in the end of summer, and lots more. It doesn’t have to be expensive.
Homeschooling Feedback: No funding in our state. The public school is getting wiser about different styles of learning for different students and do offer some on-line classes /distance learning.
Personally, I do not feel that this is as successful as homeschooling but it is a step in the right direction.
We are not wealthy. We use the library and internet for research and reading. We use resources that we find in the trashcans at school. (We are public school employees.)
Our son is 15 and we have been homeschooling for 3 years.
We are creative with our schedules and it works for us.
Homeschooling Feedback: I’m actually home-schooled and have been for the last two years.
My family doesn’t have much of an income either, since it’s only my mother and my siblings and I, but we did find a reliable home-schooling program called Pennfoster. It’s actually a pretty good home-school. You get the tests sent to you by mail and when you get them you can either take them paper style and send the results through the phone, email or mail or you can work entirely over the internet–except on some courses/lessons.
It’s actually pretty affordable. Tuition is a little over 900 dollars, but it’s affordable because you have three years to finish the program and you only have to pay thirty-five dollars a month. If you want you can pay it all in full.
My mom has already paid in full, but we did monthly payments for quite some time until we had enough money saved up. It’s a very great program because you can get help and you can take your time. The website is: Pennfoster.com
It applies to all states in the United States and if you want to move all you have to do is tell them your new address and they’ll change the mailing address, so it’ll work in Minnesota.
Good luck!
Edit: This isn’t something where someone comes over to your house though. It’s something your parents or anybody else for that matter can help you with, but the tests aren’t relatively hard if you study them. Just check out the web site though.
Homeschooling Feedback: Parents don’t get any money for the government for homeschooling. In fact, they still have to pay taxes to keep the schools open.
I know a family of four who lives off of their church. The father was a ballet dancer in his youth and might get some small amount of money, but that’s not going to keep four kids fed, clothed, educated, and housed in NYC.
You can homeschool basically for free if you use the library. Yes, even high school. For example, you can get a grade-appropriate reading list and get those books out of the library. What’s stopping you from writing a paper? Same goes for science books.
If your local libraries aren’t too good, look on eBay. The only thing you’d probably have to spend money on would be math books, but you can get yourself set up with a year of math for under $200.
Homeschooling is much cheaper than public schooling if you look at what people are paying in taxes.
My family is middle-class. My dad is a lawyer -it doesn’t pull in a ton of cash- and my mom works from home. We probably make more money than the average person, but we live in an expensive place so it costs more to live as a middle-class family. I share an undersized room and get a good chunk of my clothes from a thrift store. TBH I’d still be in that situation if we didn’t homeschool -2k rent for slightly under 650 square feet is a good deal- but my education is much, much better than if I were in school.
Homeschooling Feedback: We are not wealthy. We live on one income. I would estimate that we spend about $70 per year. We make extensive use of the library, I volunteer with the groups that run my child’s classes, and she volunteers so that she can do Tae Kwan Do and horseback riding.
I’ve linked you to a site with the laws for your state.
Be well.
Homeschooling Feedback: Glurpy is right in everything except her statement that $715 is nothing to write home about. I would love to have that much per child in addition to what I scrape together. In fact, that would have paid for everything I ordered for next year, I have 3 kids and $715 each would have been $2145. I don’t think I spent that quite that much ordering supplies, although it came close.
At any rate, most places are like the place I live. You get NO help as an independent homeschooler.
We are not rich either. Our income puts us just barely above the poverty line. We make so little that after deductions are taken for all three kids we never owe income tax. While that sounds good, the fact is that the only reason we don’t owe is because we didn’t make enough to owe in the first place.
Somehow we just make it work. We don’t eat out often, when we vacation it is usually near home at a camp ground in a tent. We eat beans and rice often. My kids get clothes from value village most of the time. We have to limit our driving.
I clean houses for extra money, it pays well ($22-$25 an hour), but I can only do it one day a week if I am going to have time to homeschool adequately.
Its tough, and its getting tougher, but we will find a way to make it work because Public School is just not an option we are willing to consider. There are many reasons why we won’t. I won’t go into all of that right now, but I know that we will continue to make it work even if it means we have to go back to staggering our work schedules so both of us can work full time (we did that once to get out of a tight spot).
Homeschooling Feedback: There are MANY ways to save money on homeschooling. Some people use the free curricula and resources that are available, some buy and sell used books, and some work from home. There are places that offer homeschool discounts that help you save money, and there are many tricks to the trade of saving money on homeschooling. Here is a website full of ideas for you:
Good luck!
Homeschooling Feedback: Well, I was a SAHM for five years before we started HS’ing. Before that, we planned our budget, our expenses, and the timing of a child very carefully. When we were married, we knew I’d stay home when we had kids. We didn’t know then that we’d be HS’ing, but after being a SAHM, it wasn’t that much of a switch.
As others have said, there are no financial breaks for HS’ing. However, in Illinois (my state) and Minnesota, there are *state* tax credits available for HS’ing expenses. We usually receive $400+ back in tax credit on $3000-4000/year of expenses.
Here’s the link for info in MN:
As to how we can afford it, we have always budgeted every cent of our income, and know where every cent goes. We are upper-middle class on one income and have no debt - including a mortgage. So we plan for HS’ing expenses just like any other expense.
We are very frugal. We have two cars we purchased new, w/o loans in 1991 and 1996. We’ll drive them until they die, and buy replacements with cash. We’ll pay cash for our next home. We do other very frugal things to get by on one income and extremely high medical bills.
You can HS for little to no money, or you can spend thousands - it all just depends.
In MN, you also have a virtual *public* school option with MNVA:
It’s a way to be educated at home with tax dollar support. It’s still a public school, not a homeschool, but very, very similar. We use the same curriculum they do, and have for over five years. However, we have to purchase it ourselves, which is about $1500 of our HS’ing budget.
Homeschooling Feedback: Well in my family there are 2 incomes and it hardly pays the bills. We use out tax refund to buy the majority of our curricula every year. I buy small things throughout the year but wait until Feburary to do the most shopping.
They were talking about tax credits in La for home school and private school families. There are no stipends that we are given. The laws vary from state to state on all of this so you really have to look at the laws in your state.
For a list of laws in your state you can go to
Homeschooling Feedback: Homeschooling is free. Everything that people do is a choice. We don’t spend money on textbooks unless our kids want them. I did get a great deal at a church school on an entire set of books, for four grades, for less than $20. I bought my son’s high school math books at the public library book sale, $5 to $7 each (trig, geometry, precalc and calc) We check out text books and other books at the library.
Our big expenditures are extra curricular activities, which we’d pay to do whether kids were in school or not, scouts, instrument lessons, sports, etc.
People always talk about how expensive everything is, but we are raising seven kids on a modest income without any debt outside of a mortgage. And I know people who buy their houses with cash so they have no mortgage. It’s all about choices, as I say.
Homeschooling Feedback: First you need to go to this website It shows that MN has “moderate regulation”, It requires parents to send notification, test scores, and/or professional evaluation of student progress. You might have to pay for testing and evaluations, but it probably won’t be that much money for you. You don’t need to move.
I do feel that we wasted money on an online (Canada) cyber school that wasn’t any good. It was our first year homeschooling and we didn’t know that we could have simpified things. So, just get cheap workbooks (grammar…) and borrow books from the library. How old are your kids? There are a lot of free websites that give you worksheets to print out
I ended up buying some cheap books from Amazon.com… I bought a Pre-Algebra book for $1.50 + S&H $3.99… and a Reading/Language Arts book that was originally $84 for only $2 +S&H (I had to turn off the computers, because my kids were getting addicted to some online games). Also, I went on our local school’s website and just followed what they were doing and I snooped on other school website. I got ideas on different field trips to nature areas that I wouldn’t have known about…ect.
I’d just like you to know that some people “unschool”, especially the first year. And the kids are learning by asking questions on what interests them, while they are de-stressing from the public schools. And I think most parents that decide to homeschool are probably smarter than the teachers. You’ll do fine homescholing, I read your profile that you write books.
Good luck with your homeschool plan, it’s not as hard as you think, to do it on little money.
Homeschooling Feedback: Georgia has a K-12 program and they send all the books and you do have deadlines to meet.. From my understanding you return the books when done. Part of taxes you pay if I am not mistaken. I think they have done this because so many home school, and they are losing federal money.
Homeschooling Feedback: My parents home-educate us mob for approx. $500 per year so it doesn’t necessarily follow that one’s parents have to be rolling in money in order to home-educate.
Both our parents run businesses from home so neither are denied the right to work simply because we’re home-educated. However, like most pastoralists these days, we’re a long way from (cash) rich! Additionally, we’re unschoolers; our parents don’t actually teach us preferring instead that our education should be auto-didactic in origin, with them acting as our mentors rather than teachers.
Yes, we do get various allowances and benefits but nothing like as much (in terms of dollar amounts) as we would get if we were to go to school; it’s probably about 2% of the amount we’d receive if we were to go away to school. We’re outwith the US though.
Homeschooling Feedback: You just learn to do it. You prioritize. When all of my kids were small the number one priority was joining HSLDA. It was $100, and provided protection for our family from the harassment of the school.
Second priority was books. We did unit studies based on novels. I would buy a couple of novels that we would read for the age levels (jr high, elementary). Spelling, vocabulary, writing assignments were all taken from the novels. We also found complimentary science and social study topics to go with the novels that we researched from the library or the web. We kept science notebook journals and Social Study journals. We just created projects from the topics that complimented what we were reading whether they were writing assignments, time lines, maps, posters, oral reports, hands-on art projects like dioramas, etc. Sometimes we read biographies about a famous person or non-fiction science books about a topic.
Each child had their own math book at the proper level.
You don’t have to buy six different curriculums for six different kids. Use topics. If your topic is the Civil War then take everything from that topic for each kid. Get books that you can read together or alone. Use the library. Create time lines and projects. Choose spelling and vocabulary words related to the topic. Unit studies are the best way to go when educating several kids.
Homeschooling Feedback: We exist the same way as any other family living on one income. We rarely eat out or buy take-away, limit the amount of car use, don’t buy Xboxes for our kids, our TV cost me $30 and is about 12th hand. We include many of their school supplies amongst their Christmas presents (what kid doesn’t love getting a new packet of coloured pencils?) We don’t buy branded clothing or other merchandise, we shop at second hand shops. We only have the necessary amount of clothing and shoes, and only buy more if we really need it. We eat wholegrain styled food rather than relying on expensive packet stuff. We live in probably the cheapest inhabitable house in town. Our luxury money goes on books and craft supplies, for the most part, and a few inexpensive hobbies. Or more expensive hobbies that are justified by the social and educational value. We do SCA as a family, but my children will never do calesthenics or anything like that. Or not until they are old enough to work and pay for it themselves. Basically, we live simple lives and don’t do much impulse buying!
I don’t imagine any government would pay parents to homeschool. Why would they? Where I live, registered homeschoolers get the same education bonus when children enter prep (K for you Americans) and year 7. That’s it and I was surprised when I found out about that!
Homeschooling Feedback: We have mostly relied on used books, swapped books, and even once I rented a whole cur. from a someone in our group. In our hs group we can put adds through the email group. I can advertise to see if anyone has a particular cur they want to sell, or easily find a market for the cur I want to sell. When I sell books I roll that money over into new cur. I did a search for used cur sales in Min and found several, so hopefully there is one near you.
I put clear contact paper over soft cover books to make them last longer and that way they fetch a higher price upon resale (it repells p&j really well). When a binding breaks on a book, Staples will cut the binding off and comb bind it for a small fee. This has really extended the life of books many times. These tricks have allowed us to pass the books down in the family, so it is actually getting cheaper as far as book expenses every year. Which is really interesting since our income now is really comfortable and in the early years we really had to be frugal.
Another idea, many wonderful old books and even old textbooks are free online and can be downloaded, printed out, and comb bound for just a little bit of money. Of course the net is a wealth of sites that have interactive lessons for free. Just keep in mind that too much school on the computer can be tedious and hard on the eyes.
Take inventory of your skills. You may have a hobby or educational background that you can creatively work into a source of income from home. Some things I have done for income are; free lance art work, baby sitting, cleaning service, seasonal retail work, and pet sitting. Friends of mine have used their educational backgrounds or areas of expertise to teach classes to other homeschoolers (in our state, tutors need only have a high school diploma). I even had a friend who found things in the trash, fixed and cleaned them up, and sold them at a twice yearly yard sale. This quite nicely funded her homeschooling. Some other jobs women I know do from home are; transcribe medical files, transcribe for the court system, make appointments for insurance adjusters, catering, cake decorating, and some are nurses on the weekends.
When I am involved in a money making project I make every effort to make homeschooling my top priority, so that the kids are not shortchanged. Of course a balance must be achieved, so that family time is allotted for (and the needs of the marriage are met).