How do you guys make ends meet?

[merlotmummy14]

I really would like to homeschool our daughter but it would mean one of us becoming a stay at home parent. It would make the most sense for my partner to take time off as once I get my degree I will be the high earner. However he never did great at school and doesn't feel like he could teach her past primary 4 and worries he wouldn't be able to teach her anything of a good standard. However if I take time off, other than it being a waste of my degree, we would financially struggle to make ends meet much less afford workbooks, materials, etc. We would most likely be on income support. I also always struggled with maths and science throughout school and don't think I could teach her to a good standard in those subjects. The other thing is if we homeschooled I would like to travel a lot with her so she can learn about different cultures and places rather than just reading about them in a book however without two incomes we couldn't afford this. How do you guys manage? Do you have a lot of family support? I just don't see how accessing free homeschooling resources could be enough. Instamums who homeschool seem to have an endless pit of money.

For us it was priorities, we bought our house when I was pregnant and while fortunate that being older than me and on a okay salary dh had saved a deposit, we bought far cheaper than we could have to allow us flexibility -I did try going back to work after child one working nights and weekends (no child care) and after a year we both decided we'd rather do without my income than live like that.
When it became time to discuss school, we decided the costs of school and childcare and problems of sick days would off set my salary and if I wasn't working sending the kids to school has no appeal.
We had (and still do) very cheap holidays, didn't run a car (bought somewhere where walking to lots of places was option), mobile phones, even tv for a while and otherwise lived cheaply - charity shop clothes etc. In time I picked up work from home that I could do before they got up/evening.
For what it's worth i have a degree I have never used professionally certainly never felt it has been wasted.

For things where we aren't expert, we skill share with other home educators. Lots of people do classes for bits and pieces, as well, as the children get older.

Family support: emotional yes, but not child care (all far flung)

Financial: some people have both parents working part time, so they can juggle between them. There are home ed childminders. Some people work flexitime, or do shift work. Some are self-employed.

You cut your coat to fit your cloth, really. We don't do foreign holidays (or expensive holidays, actually - stay with friends or family, or camp). We didn't run a car for years. Charity shop clothes, toys, books, hand-me-downs. I know lots of people who have allotments or veg gardens, which cuts down on food costs (and others who keep chickens, pigs, goats etc). There are are all sorts of ways of making it financially viable; it just means that you might need to choose which of the materialism priorities of 21st-century first world Britain to opt out of...

Leaving aside your partner's concerns about his ability to provide a good education, is he excited about the idea of home educating your daughter? If so, I am sure you all can make it happen, and that his confidence will grow once he gets stuck in. Home education looks very different from school teaching, and requires a different skill set. Parents who don't themselves have a high level of formal education can nevertheless educate their children well. This concept can be hard to get your head around until you've seen it in action.

How old is your daughter - would your partner feel comfortable about home ed just for the next few years? If he's enthused, he could try it and see how he gets on. It does sound as if that solution makes best financial sense, but of course the two of you also have to consider what would make everybody happiest. Personally I don't think home educating has been a waste of my degrees in any way, and I am happy to HE while my lower-earning partner brings in the money, meaning our standard of living is lower than it would otherwise be. But if you crave using your education in a full-time work environment, then you might not enjoy being the main home educating parent.

Why don't you both work, send her to school and buy a caravan so that you can travel around Europe and the UK every school holiday?

If home schooling is going to make you broke, surely there's no point in doing it unless your child really can't be taught well in a school.

We have a relatively cheap but lovely flat at the moment (mortgage is 300 a month and heating/electricity is minimal) but I think there's a community garden allotment nearby I can look into. Alternatively my stepfather is a gardener by trade and has a huge allotment an hour and a half away. We don't drive or have cars as everything is within walking distance for us as is. Could definitely cut out our saturday night take away as well as find cheaper phone plans. Cutting Sky TV may be a difficult one to convince my partner of as his only real 'hobby' is following the NFL and watching the matches.Pretty close to the city centre so have lots of museums, art galleries and activities on locally. Already have got into the swing of second-hand shopping as DD tends to destroy everything pretty quickly. My partner doesn't seem pretty bothered either way he just wants to be assured we can do it financially - I think with my predicted wages and perhaps an odd weekend job when things are tight it could work with your suggestions. I didn't know you got home ed childminders so that could be an option for 2 days a week or something and partner can get a wee part time office job. I also like the idea of skillsharing - my partners good at maths and I'm good at business, social subjects and english so definitely would be an option. We have lots of nurses in the family who could do biology lessons paired with run downs to the local science museum. Even if we did it for the first few years of primary so she has a chance to be a kid a little longer before being stuck in a classroom 5 days a week.

I think home ed is expensive if work has to be given up initially. Our family lives off my husband's income, and has done since I had my first kiddo. We don't get financial support from any other source, no debt etc. We're very good at budgeting.

How old is she now? I live in a cheap small apartment in the town centre. Neither of us have a car or drive. We rely on public transport mainly. All the shops etc is accessible on foot. Homeschooling beats being stuck in a hot classroom.
I think that it’s a good idea. Totally doable. I’m good at English and geography. My partner on the other hand is much better at math and history. Education is not about dull facts and textbooks or exam questions. It should definitely be exciting and simulating. I love homeschooling due to flexibility.
I’m good at research. I’ve also looked at lesson plans and exam questions.

Hi, sorry to jump on a random thread but I am seriously considering homeschooling but would need to find some evening work that I can do from home. I noticed that you said that you had done some work like that. May I please ask what work it was and how you found it? Thank you very much!

Given that neither of you are not feeling competent in primary school level work wouldn't your child be better off at school ?

TAMumof3, home education is really very different from school. Most people, including most prospective HE parents, don't realise just how different it is. That means that parents without a very strong academic background often have unfounded worries that they won't manage it. If they try it, they usually discover that the academic side of it is far easier than they imagined.

I have wondered whether this poor public understanding of the nature of home education accounts for the large numbers of teachers who end up home educating their own children. I imagine that teachers may wrongly believe that their teaching background will make them particularly good at home educating, not realising that classroom teaching skills are largely irrelevant to home education. Nearly every teacher-turned-home-educator I've met has said that if anything, their background was a bit of an impediment to home educating, and that they had to transform their understanding of learning in order to become effective in this new environment.

I don't find that confidence with academic work bears much relation to parents' success as home educators. Some of the most effective home educators I've met had a very low level of attainment in formal academics.

Thanks - I agree with what you are saying - in relation to many parents home educating - however op has defined both parents as academic nupties - a divy raising a divy is gonna result in....lets put the welfare of the child at the heart of a conversation instead of the parents idealised view of themselves shall we !
Out of interest why would you encourage a child to iss out on school to be educated by parents who don't know the basics of a primary school education ??? bit weird Saracen

Actually, research some years ago by Paula rothermel showed that academic attainment among HE children was statistically higher than among those in school. And the differential was much greater when the parents were not themselves well educated. In other words, low academic attainment in HE parents correlated with better academic attainment for their children than you'd have expected if they had continued in school. Unexpected but true.

TAMumof3, from what you say I am guessing you have little or no direct experience of home education? Most people do imagine that it looks just like school at home, with a parent acting as teacher and imparting knowledge to the child. This is the principal model of education which most of us saw throughout our own childhood, so it's no wonder we think it's the only one. I certainly thought that was how it had to be until I began exploring home education and learned otherwise.

It is possible to do school-at-home, and some home ed parents do prefer that model for part or all of their children's education. But I would say that the majority of us, particularly in the UK where there is a long history of educational freedom, don't take school-at-home as our main approach. (This is why the preferred term in Britain is "home education", rather than "homeschooling".)

At school, kids' main sources of information and understanding are their teachers and books. It's possible to augment those sources elsewhere at other times, but for 30 or so hours a week, schoolchildren's access to other educational sources is restricted.

Access to many sources is easier outside of the school walls. Home educating parents often see themselves not as teachers, but as facilitators who bring their children together with the information and skills they want to learn. That is done by taking them to the library, looking up documentaries, finding more knowledgeable people, looking up useful websites, buying books and science kits, taking them places, and enrolling them in classes.

You may find these views idealistic, but I assure you they aren't just theoretical. In the last 15 years I've met many home educating parents who themselves have a low level of formal academic attainment, whose children are being very effectively educated. They are not shut up in a cupboard with their parents 24/7 without internet access, without books, and without input from the rest of the community. For this reason, their education is not limited to what their parents know.