Home schooling -what do you do for a living?

[EmpressMatilda]

My DH and I are seriously considering home schooling our kids when they get older (at present one is 16 months, the other is a bump). What we can't really make sense of though is how people manage to afford it. At the moment I do bits and bobs from home around childcare which brings in a little extra money but isn't much. While we can cope with this for a few years it's hard to see us coping long term without me bringing in a lot more money than I currently am. Basically, I would need to be bringing in at least 25k per annum for our family to survive, at present I bring in about 5k. But how do I do this if I am going to stay at home and teach the kids? What is the answer? What does everyone else who home schools do for a living?!

DH and I run our own business, which means it's flexible and can fit in with our needs. But, to be honest, I'm not doing anything to help at the moment because I'm too busy with both DC at home. I would never be able to earn the amount you describe and home educate both my children.

I work full time and DH works part time (around 16 hrs a week). We are lucky to have good support from family, for when we are both at work, which is only part of the time DH works, if that makes sense. Our combined household income is around 50000 a year. I think we should have a better quality of life home edding - certainly I don't see us being able to afford a term time summer holiday abroad, for example, but as home edders we might wrangle an early spring one.

My dh is a musician and we have a small business.
I'm not doing much either atm as H.ed dd and it involves a lot of travel.
Dh also works from home a lot and shares H.ed

My dh is in a basic wage job (48hrs a week on nights). I childmind and foster. But foster child is at school and I'm only 1/3rd full with childminding, which enables me to do it all at once. Dh just works. I look after our children, the foster child, the mindees, I do all of the housework and organizing, and I home ed our eldest. We earn enough by doing these 3 jobs between us to have a mortgage, one car and lots of holidays (in this country). But neither of us earn near £25K.

I do supply teaching 2 days a week while DP works from home (these are DC's weekend days) then I am at home rest of the week while DP commutes. To be completely honest, we are struggling( especially with me not being paid during holidays) but when I am earning, we just manage. I do all the home-edding and sometimes wonder whether we'd be better off with DC in school and me working more hours so life wasnt such a struggle but then when my DC pleads with me not to go back to school and says how much he loves living where we do and being at home, I guess you can't put a price on his emotional well- being. However, the mortgage and bills do need to be paid so if that wasnt feasible we would have to be more creative.

I guess we must just have lower outgoings than you, OP. Our combined income is below £25k and we get by. We don't often buy things new, but we're used to that. Car boot sales, allotment, used chip oil instead of petrol in the fuel tank. That sort of thing.

Possibly the real key for us is that we have no housing costs, as we were lucky enough to buy a house just before prices shot up. We had our children later in life so the mortgage was nearly paid by the time the children came along.

If it isn't too nosy of me to ask, how are you currently managing to survive on an income which is £20k a year less than you reckon you need, and why can you not continue to live this way indefinitely? Did you have a big lump of savings which you are rapidly using up?

I'm a Playworker, which isn't terribly well paid and hours are quite irregular (I've been run off my feet the last 6 weeks, but term time is mainly just after school club hours) but it's fairly flexible (I choose in advance which days/hours I'm available for) and fits very nicely round HE. It means we have most of the day during term times for HE stuff and trips out places and best of all i have no childcare costs as DC just come with me to work this also ticks the LEA's tick boxes for socialisation nicely

Doubt my annual income is 25K though tax credits does help a lot. We manage fine on that amount, don't have massive expenditure really, although we do go on at least 1 (term time) holiday abroad each year.

I'm a writer and editor and I home ed DD(13) and DS(10). Some days I manage lots of work and other days (like today!) it's a nightmare - only the bare minimum done, paid-work-wise. However, I was just thinking today how very worth it home ed is for us at least. My DC are so happy.

Having said that, my eldest DD has decided to try out high school next year - I think she's just curious so we'll see how that goes. If she's happy, all good, if not, she knows home ed is always an option as I'm going to continue home edding her younger brother.

I'm wondering if I'll have more time for paid work next year but I suspect not - I previously found mainstream school quite demanding of my time too. (DC were at school for a bit as pre-schoolers/year 1 and 2 for DD). I found all the pick-ups and drop-offs took a big chunk out of my day (no public transport where we are) not to mention the other bits and pieces - supervising homework, doing stuff at the school to help for fairs/fundraisers etc, going to the shops for a certain pen needed for the next day, etc. We're not in the UK so don't know if it's similar there, time-wise.

I don't understand why you would need 25k to survive and be able to H.ed how do you manage now on 5k then?
have I read your point wrongly?

Thanks for these -all very interesting. In terms of why I would need 25k... one word -mortgage. If we are to have a house big enough (ie 3 bedrooms) in the area we need to be in for DH's work then we're pretty much screwed from a mortgage point of view and would never be able to pay it off! DH has a good job with good salary so at the moment we are house hunting with the mortgages we can get based on his salary. So far we have found only one we can afford and that is a wreck requiring time and money to do it up.

And there are other things. Our outgoings at the moment are pretty good. We do a lot of second hand as well, but we didn't go on holiday this year because we can't afford it and the thought of remaining in that situation as the kids get older is depressing. And there's university fees and all that one day...

At the moment we're coping fine because we see this financial situation as temporary. I have to admit personally that the thought of a household income totaling less than 65k is pretty frightening and I don't know how people do it. It's not about being frivolous, it's about freedom from debt. Sorry if this makes me sound spoilt.

You all sound like you have great jobs and have lovely lives for yourselves and your kids. I really want to work something out for my own family. Wordsmithforever -I would love to do what you do for a living. I have always wanted to be a writer and at present I am editing a magazine from home (hard work and very little money in it) but my previous background is as a librarian -probably one of the worst professions to translate into working from home!

DH also wants to do some of the home ed as he's great at the maths, science and computing aspect (whereas I am good at English and humanities) but it's hard to see how that could ever work!

I am a single parent and I am self employed working from home, running my own business. I have an income of about £20k...so find it a bit odd to hear someone say that £65k is the lower limit! I have never earned that in my life!

If you want to make it work then you'll find a way...it's about compromise and working out what is most important to you and your family.

Empress - I completely understand what you're saying and I don't think it makes you sound spoilt at all. It's all very well people saying it's not necessary to earn so much money, but it depends where you live. If you are living in an area with high house prices and you want to buy your own home, then you need a sizeable income to pay the mortgage. You might be cutting back on all sorts of other things, but that mortgage still needs paying.

We are lucky in that we were able to put down a sizeable deposit on our house, thanks to making money on our previous property, thereby reducing the mortgage payments. If we were paying a full mortgage for this house, we'd be in trouble by now.

I'm not sure what you do in your situation, to be honest. But if you are really determined to home educate, it may work out somehow. Christopher Lloyd and his wife took a year off work, using savings to live on, so that they could home educate their children. In the end, the activities of home ed led to a whole new career for him and he never had to return to his previous job.

We have a business, with accommodation, which my husband runs. It also enables him to be flexible to help with some of the home ed (obviously I do most of the home ed).

I know some people manage to home school on a budget, but we spend an awful lot of money. Activities (every day/evening), travel, meets, text books, equipment, subscriptions, exams etc etc

Im a single mum, but run a glamping site on my son's grandparents farm, and also run forest school sessions there. I am also a medical herbalist so fit that around other stuff.
Often the kids come with me or my daughter can stay home and youTube work while I am up there, or she comes and helps. she is particularly good at the meet and greets and showing the guests around