When we talk about Financial Wellness in our homeschools, the number one question always seems to be “what are ways to save money as a homeschooler?”  Most of us are single-income earners.  And because of that, finding ways to save money as a homeschooler is important.  Why?  Because we are responsible for all the educational materials that our children use.  And I know that we all want to make sure that we have the right resources for our children.  We want them to learn, to love learning, and to be growing into functioning members of society.

When you want to save money as a homeschooler, most often you think about ways to reduce your grocery budget or curricula budget.  Those things matter, but there are a lot of other ways to save money as a homeschooler, and we are going to explore them today.

1. Save Money as a Homeschooler: Budget

We have talked about budgets this month a little bit already.  It may seem counterintuitive to say that budgeting will help you save money as a homeschooler.  The reality is that if you don’t do a budget, you are not keeping track of your money.  Too often, without a budget, you are looking to see where your money went over the month.  It may be small purchases, things like grabbing a cup of coffee on your way to piano lessons.  It could be bigger expenditures that you hadn’t planned for.  We recently had to have an electrician come and do some work at our house.  If we hadn’t been budgeting for that potential expense (house repair sinking fund), we could have been in trouble.

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In order to save money as a homeschooler you need to budget.  You need to know where your money is going.  If you are new to budgeting, a great place to start would be Dave Ramsey’s book The Total Money Makeover.  He also has amazing budgeting forms available on his website.

There is a good chance that if you haven’t been budgeting right along, or not in a while, it will be very painful to get through the budgeting process.  But, sit down with your spouse, work through the budget together, make a plan.  It will most likely take you several months of trial and error in order to come to a budget that everyone is comfortable with.  This small step will be the biggest step in setting you on a path to save money as a homeschooler.

2. Save Money as a Homeschooler: Curricula

When you are creative with your spending on curricula, you are able to save money as a homeschooler.  We all want the best deals for our homeschool curriculum choices, but we also want to make sure our kids have the best tools available.  You can find more about how to be financially creative with homeschool curricula here.

Not only can you be creative when you purchase curricula, but you can also re-use different curriculum with your other children.  This is one of the reasons we love a literature-based curriculum so much, we have lots of books available that can be used over and over again.  Other ways to save money while re-using curriculum would be to re-use the teacher’s guides with math, spelling, grammar, etc.  When you only have to purchase the consumable portion of a program, it is a lot more cost effective over time.

3. Save Money as a Homeschooler: Get Drastic

When we first started homeschooling, money was extremely tight.  There was a lot of college debt, as well as car and home debt.  It seemed like we were constantly crawling uphill.  We needed to do some drastic things to our budget.  I wasn’t prepared to cut our homeschool budget.  It became a very important line item for me.  We were willing to be drastic in our other life choices in order to spend the money on the homeschool curricula that we wanted.  Every person has different priorities, so don’t take this as the gold standard, but it is what we did.

The first thing we did was try to reduce our grocery budget.  I planted a garden which I still do today.  I’m not entirely successful at it, but it is a learning experience and fun – except when bugs invade our space!  We also sold one of our cars.  We became a single car family.  If that isn’t drastic, I don’t know what is.  I know that a lot of people will say that they can’t do that, and that is fine.  These were our choices.

Reducing to one car meant that we weren’t always going to run errands, spending more money than we had available, paying for gas and maintenance on two vehicles.  We had to plan more, and be more intentional with our time when the car was available, but it did save quite a bit of money, and actually helped to pay down quite a bit of debt.

I will say that we are within walking distance for our downtown area, so if we wanted to go somewhere, we could walk – but that didn’t happen very often in the winter time!  We would spend a lot of time outside playing in our yard, going on walks, and riding bikes when the weather cooperated.

4. Save Money as a Homeschooler: Use Teacher Discounts

It is amazing to see how many teacher discounts are available!  I think it is wonderful that so many businesses support teachers.  The interesting thing though, is that we, as homeschoolers, are also teachers.  Not only are we teachers, but we are responsible for purchasing all of the curricula and supplies that our students need to learn each year.  Oftentimes this is while we also pay local taxes to support the local school system.  When I realized that there were teacher discounts for public and private school teachers, I immediately wanted to know if there were teacher discounts available for homeschoolers as well.  And I’m happy to let you know that there are.

I have spent a lot of time combing through all of the different teacher discounts available.  Why?  In order to put together an easy guide for YOU to use yourself.  If you are interested in getting this guide, you can sign up below.

The Bottom Line

Learning to save money as a homeschooler can be a trying time.  We want the best for our kids, but often that comes on a modest budget.  If you start with budgeting, this is going to be an amazing help to you and your family.  You will be on your way to financial freedom.  It may seem like it is a ways off, but when you get to that point, you will feel so much lighter.  It will allow you to make decisions with and for your family that you may have thought out of reach.  Try to start with a budget, but also use these other tips.  Don’t be afraid to get drastic!  Cut the cable, reduce your cell phone plan, maybe only have one streaming subscription rather than all of them.

You are making a difference just by being here today, showing that you care about the financial wellness of your family!  If you have any questions, please reach out to me here.