Homeschooling can get costly if are not watching your spending. And it's not just curriculum that adds up! If you want to make sure you are not spending more than you want to, it is a good idea to set a budget and work within those parameters.
For us, the majority of our homeschool budget goes to curriculum. When I'm looking for curriculum, I like to look for pieces that I can use again with my other children. I also like to look for curriculum that is in PDF format. That means I can save a little by printing and binding at home. Other things that we include in our homeschool budget is classes that could be considered courses for our children's education, books for using alongside our curriculum, and a miscellaneous category for things like paper, folders, pens and pencils, etc. You could also a include things like memberships and tickets to field trips, but we don't choose to do that ourselves. The first step is deciding how much you can/want to spend on homeschool. For us we try to keep it around $1,500 to $2000 total for all of our four children. I use one total for everyone because I'm often buying curriculum that can be used again with younger children. And that means that the majority of our budget is going to be spend on our oldest who needs all new curriculum, while our youngest should only need a few things. While I'm searching for curriculum, I try to keep our budget in mind. If I find something for one subject that is on the more expensive side, then I try to look for some less expensive options for other subjects. It's a balancing act! It is very helpful to create a workbook (I use Excel, but you could use Google Sheets or something similar) to plug curriculum into. Then you can keep track of what curriculum costs are to help you keep within your set budget. I keep a projected spending tab, a price per cart tab, and an actual spending tab in my workbook. That helps me to keep track of what I plan to spend as well as what I actually spend. If you want to see more about this process, you can watch my YouTube video here:
Do you create a homeschool budget? What kinds of things do you include? How do you keep track of your spending? I'd love to hear from you down in the comments!
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