Valorie Delp recently wrote about The Cost of Homeschooling, where she detailed where homeschooling costs tend to come from. The people who commented on this blog post seemed to agree with her costs and felt they spent about the same amount. There seems to be a new debate as to how much money a homeschooler should spend. Some feel that there are far too many homeschooling resources in the world, on the Internet, and in the library to spend a thing. Others feel that you get what you pay for. If you spend nothing, your quality will suffer. Still, others bounce back and forth between the two, based on available money.
Today I would like to address frugal homeschooling, median cost homeschooling, and high-end homeschooling in a three part series. I will start with median costs. Frugal homeschooling and high-end homeschooling posts will follow closely.
Median cost homeschooling (when you have some money to spend, but are not sure where to spend it) should be based on priorities… your priorities. Look at what is more important to you and your family, and what is available around you, then pay for those things that are most important to you. Up until now, (It will change next year) I have been from the median camp, so I will give you some examples:
Year 1, we knew we had money to spend, but did not know where to spend it. At the time, we had one computer and felt computerized curriculum was important, so we spent our money on a second computer, and a couple of online subscriptions costing about $40.00 a month. We continued to pay for the same extra curriculars that we had paid for when the kids were in public school. When I stopped and counted our costs for that year which included less money spent on clothing and less money wasted on uneaten school lunches, we were several hundred dollars ahead. Homeschooling 2 children had cost about $3000 that year, but it was less than we had spent to send them to public school.
Year 2, we spent some time analyzing what the kids were getting and what we felt they needed. We decided to change the order of our day, and changed the extra curricular activities to daytime with other homeschoolers, and paid for a history and arts program that we still use. The extra curricular classes cost less, but the academic and arts program costs more. We kept the online programs. We paid about $2000.00 that year. (The extra $1000 from the year before went to the computer).
Year 3 was the year of the personal laptop computer for each person, as the children’s curriculum was taking longer to complete, but hubby was clever enough to make them Christmas gifts. This helped to defray the costs. If you count the computers and academic classes for my child who was now middle school, we paid $4000.00 that year. It was bordering on the high end, but remember, we purchased two computers (instead of normal Christmas gifts).
This year, year 4, we decided the kids needed a bit of a break. Instead of outside classes for my son, we hired a tutor so he could emotionally prepare himself for middle and high school. While he kept up academically last year, he was certainly stressed. We are using this year to prepare our daughter as well, as they will both be taking 1 day a week academic classes next year, God willing. With the tutor, arts and history classes, and swimming lessons at the YMCA we are paying $3000.00 each year.
Looking back over the last 4 years of homeschooling our upper elementary aged children, the median cost was $3000.00 per year, or $1500 per child. It included computer purchases, outside classes or tutors depending on needs and extra curricular. The meat of their programs, for the most part was the least expensive part. We used Time4learning, which cost us about $20.00 per month each.
Speaking of only $20.00 per month for curriculum, watch for my next post on frugal homeschooling.