A question regarding finances

[dillite]

Is there a minimum amount of money that you need every month, when home educating? This is for a primary school aged child. Also, are there any single parents home edding? If there are- how much income do you need to be able to do it? Just a rough number, as obviously I understand that different areas/ people need different incomes.

Just the amount that you need to live anyway, pretty much. We have three lots of season tickets to really interesting places, and go to the same places again and again. I know a lot of people have national trust or English Heritage membership, though we don't.

We do a lot of free stuff - parks, meeting up with other families, going for bike rides etc etc etc.

We also live in charity shop clothes, buy charity shop books, do a lot of gumtree and freecycling, grow vegetables... there are all sorts of thrifty ways to live, and having new smart stuff doesn't matter so much socially when you aren't in the school environment (lots of the home ed community wouldn't be aiming at or valuing conspicuous consumerism).

Things like exciting foreign holidays are a lot less important when your daily life is wonderful, too :)

Hello OP

We don't spend much tbh. I had an initial outlay for workbooks from smiths. There are lots of reasonably priced ones, especially if you wait for offers or end of school year when they are cheaper.
We use the library and cheap books shops. Occasionally I will buy something from Waterstones but only special occasions and when there are offers on.
On a practical note, lunches are also cheaper as you aren't confined to sandwich box food. So we quite often have whoops deals, soup, left overs from day before.
We save on train fares by having a railcard, this for us is cheaper than fuel and paying for parking.
We have tutors but we were paying for these when dd was at school so don't count for H.ed purpose.
I can't give you a figure I'm afraid, but you can do it as cheaply or as expensive as you like tbh.
Some people pay for online courses/tutors I'm told this can be expensive as can buying a curriculum.
We also get free resources from tes and guardian, which help a lot too.
Holiday for us is June to study History, Music, R.E etc in Rome, and in Aug/sept to east Anglia for Geography and history etc. These are far cheaper than taking family on holiday abroad during school holidays.

Savings
Lunches are no longer subject to the diktats of the packed lunch police/limited to what can be wolfed down in 15 mins - so can be last nights leftovers/peanut butter sarnies etc. School lunches aren't cheap nowadays but you can easy do it for less at home

School uniforms - these branded polos and jumpers in modern school uniforms aren't cheap. Now you can go to Primark/buy bright coloured shoes in the sales/purple coats etc for every day. You save money here definitely. I've noticed home edded kids are far less label conscious generally for casual wear too.

School trips/donations/cake sales etc, etc. It's suprising how these add up without your realising it! I found that I'm spending the same on special trips as we did before so this is fairly cost neutral, especially if your local group takes advantage of group discounts.

Holidays - you can avoid the extortionate August rates and go at cheaper times of the year.

Costs
Higher home heating bill in the winter.
childcare/loss of earnings.
Internet connection and computer - there's so much really, GOOD free stuff on the web available now you'd be crazy not to have this. a printer is optional, but very, very useful.

A budget of £100 a month gets you pretty much rolls royce home ed at primary level imho, even if you choose to go down the online school/packaged curriculum route. The really critical expense I can see a long way down the road is going to be for GCSE exam fees and associated costs.

Thank you. It does sound like it wouldn't be any more expensive than how we live now generally- we do weekly days out ( I am a member at the NT and EH), all the craft stuff and such, travel is either buses or trains, etc. That's quite good to know. We have been offered a place at a special measures school, so I am now 99% set on home ed- I thought that I would give the school a go if it was a good school, but in this case, I feel that it's best to do home ed.

I'll echo what others have said. You can spend as much or as little on your child's education as you want. If you see friends doing activities or outings or buying cool educational toys and books which you can't afford, you may wish you could buy those things too. But they aren't essential.

For me it is like this question: how much money do you need when you go into a good toyshop just before Christmas?

It's good that I don't go into toy shops then .