Counting Pennies, Reaping Riches

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Can you homeschool well without a big budget? Can you homeschool on a low income or with limited resources, yet still provide a rich and beautiful education for your children? When you have no money for that shiny new homeschool curriculum, is homeschooling still possible? Absolutely. As a homeschool mom of six, guest writer Corrie Johnson has spent most of the past 15 years creating a meaningful and beautiful education for her children on a shoestring—sometimes with barely a penny to spare. If you’re navigating financial limitations or simply choosing a simpler lifestyle, this post offers encouragement, practical tips, and a heartfelt look at how homeschooling on a budget can lead to lasting joy, deep learning, and an education filled with faith, family, and contentment.

homeschooling on a budget low income riches counting pennies

My third child is my first born daughter and she’s the first to crave lessons and lectures and the old hard books, the first to naturally write in response to all she reads. She has been praying and pursuing our permission for a year now to take a specific class with her friends at an online school.

I marveled last week as I did something I never thought I would do, which was to sign up my persistent girl for one live online rhetoric class for her sophomore year.

I marveled because the cost of this one class was approximately equal to my entire yearly budget to homeschool all six of my students for many, many years in the past.

For most of my 15 year career as a homeschool mom, such a class would not have been considered for a split second. I’ve graduated my oldest and my second is busily launching himself into the world though I have one more year of officially educating him, if he’ll stay home long enough to let me. This dear girl is the first to have the drive, the need, and parents with the finances to allow her an online course with a live teacher and fellow classmates.

But for many years, we’ve been building a life and education based on the richest kinds of wealth, without extra pennies to rub together.

A Beautiful Homeschool Life Within Our Means

In the beginning, I had a joke inside my head about starting a blog called, “Homeschooling in the Double Wide” and though we are no longer renting that 70’s doublewide trailer with the white shag carpet and shiny orange-flowered wallpaper, my desire to live beautiful lives within our means remains the same.

I want to shout it to the financially average masses that there is freedom in limitations and beauty in the simple, homespun life. Much can be done with sparrows, Charlotte Mason said. When I began homeschooling, there were blogs, but you had to go looking for them and choose which long entries were worthy of your time and attention. No one was scrolling social media, screenshotting every other ad or influencer’s choices. I’m so thankful I made it past our foundational years without those extra pressures and expectations.

homeschooling charlotte mason sparrow riches counting pennies

Reframing Your Limitations

Living a financially disciplined life often requires a new way of framing your limitations. I first encountered this idea when I was choosing a college and realized that the Lord who loved me enough to give his Son was going to give me enough to go to the “right” college. The scholarships offered determined my direction, and because of this perspective on limitations, I went with peace and confidence despite that it wasn’t my “favorite” choice.

When you live this out in a world that tells you to pursue what you want regardless of the cost, it is an opportunity to be a counter-cultural witness. Acceptance of our financial status is the first step toward contentment.

Perhaps the best curriculum for your family is the one you can afford.

This was part of the impetus for us to look into Ambleside Online, and part of the reason I never shopped around since finding it and beginning to purchase the books. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that in those early years, when I had less confidence, I did not have the money to shop around and change curriculum.

The limitation led to consistency, and the increased familiarity with the curriculum led to better implementation and fruitfulness.

What a blessing that I received from the Lord’s prudent hand.

The Gift of Contentment

Another creative framing I have come to adopt is that contentment is a gift I give to my husband and my children. Children rarely think of themselves as poor or needy unless their parents are expressing those feelings. Often homeschooling requires a financial sacrifice on the part of at least one parent. But the Lord is faithful over and over to provide.

When you choose to thank Him and honor Him for whatever your income is, you are expressing confidence and faith in God, which turns your children’s eyes towards Him. A constant wishlist or barrage of desires, directed at the Lord or your husband, will gradually discourage and wear down your family’s contentment.

Nothing you could purchase for your children surpasses the effect of a happy, peaceful marriage with mutual respect between mom and dad, both looking to God for provision. Though costly at times, holding our tongues and viewing our limitations rightly, is free.

A worldwide and historically large perspective on education has also helped me receive my limitations as a gift. If Caroline Ingalls could begin her girls’ early education with a 10 cent slate, what more do I need? If children in Africa are sitting on crude clay benches and learning with one teacher to 50 kids and scarcely a textbook, but later coming here to medical school, what more do I need?

Use your imagination to think about school throughout the ages and around the world. At what place and at what time have we ever had so much access to free books, free music, free art, free instruction? Are we sure that money is what we need?

Or do we need a different kind of richness? Do we need to smile (for free, freely) at our children when they enter the room we are in? Do we need more flowers and gardens and time outside? Do we need to invite another family over for popcorn and lemonade on a spring day, making or deepening a friendship? Do we need to build habits to increase our consistency? Do we need to replace some modern books with some with old and beautiful language? Sadly for our culture, they are usually cheap at library book sales.

Do we need to loudly sing folk songs and hymns? Do you have any idea what that will do for your family culture? Singing together creates a family soundtrack for your road trips and your life. Folk songs tell your teens they aren’t the only ones in love or angst. Hymns can be sung when praying feels hard, when your feelings and doubt are leaking out but your soul is crying out to the Lord you love.

Smiles, respect, habits, library cards, family friends, websites, mercy and conversation are all free. These are some of the most valuable tools in your homeschool arsenal and they cost literally nothing.

Practical Tips for Pursuing Riches Without Money

Tips, from the expected to the strange:

Estate sales frequently have old, sturdy staplers and hole punches, and often unused notebooks, graph paper, etc.
Pray for what you need and wait before you buy it. How many times I have bought a child something I thought they needed and God sent it in a bag of hand me downs the next week.
When your friends want to meet at Starbucks or ChickFilA and that’s out of reach for you, ask if they’d like to come over for coffee instead. Or meet at the park for a picnic with the kids. You’ll be surprised at what hospitably opening your doors will do for your relationships and find that Starbucks can’t compete. (I cannot express to you how many times I would read someone’s advice on how to save money and want to tear it up because “Don’t buy expensive coffee shops drinks” was inevitably on the list. I would internally shout: I NEVER DO THAT ANYWAY. As a frugal person, those kinds of tips meant nothing to me.)
Unfollow people on Instagram or FB whose posts routinely make you want to buy something or feel inferior for not being able to purchase what they can. This can be so subtle. Use discernment and clean up your list of people you follow often.
A person with friends is always richer than a lonely person. Many retiring homeschool moms have passed us books and supplies. Being part of a church makes my life richer in so many ways – mostly not tangible, but sometimes it is an actual physical gift to me.
Use birthdays and Christmas to invest in hobbies, pets, instruments, art supplies, camping gear, and things that will give long term richness to your family’s lives.

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I’m Corrie Johnson, homeschool mom to 6 amazing children from 9-19 years old. We have used Ambleside Online in our house from the beginning and our lives are richer because of it. My husband has the privilege of serving as lead pastor at a rural church in the far northern mountains of California, in a county with more cows than people. I’ve been a type one diabetic for 34 years; I’m a recovering perfectionist; and I love my family, my garden, my critters, my books, and my church. You can find me on Instagram as corrie.elisabeth, although I’m certainly not a curated content creator and you may find more sunsets and puppies than advice.

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