In the days of increasing state budget shortfalls, some states have decided to seize assets in people's safe deposit boxes. Like this story:
Carla Ruff's Safe Deposit Box
Somebody got a good deal, because the government figured that her box was unclaimed and the owner was unknown... even though she still had an account with the bank and the safe deposit box was paid for. They decided to sell off her great-grandmother's pearls for $1800, even though they were worth more than $82,000. Good deal for whoever bought them at auction.
Perhaps the best place for your precious valuables is in your mattress nowadays. The government feels free to take anything from you whenever it feels that it wants to.
No wonder living "off the grid" is becoming more popular.
Showing posts with label budget. Show all posts
Showing posts with label budget. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Turning Lemons Into Lemonade
Just hours before my house caught on fire, the Lord told my pastor to change his message from Jude to one on Psalms 18:30, which basically says that the Lord's way is perfect, and he protects those that trust in him.
While I was in church listening to this message, my house was on fire, unbeknownst to me. The smoke detector woke up my dh, who saved my computer and the pictures contained inside (my hero), and put out the fire with the help of my neighbor who brought along a water hose after he used up our fire extinguisher on it.
When I got home and discovered that our house had been on fire, I was shocked. I still find it a little hard to believe. Isn't that one of those things that happens to other people? After finding out the real important information, that my husband was okay (and yes, the pictures), in a way you just have to let it sink in and figure out what to do next.
It looks like we've figured out what to do next, and I'm pretty happy about it. We're going to move to a new house, whether or not our house ends up being totalled or repaired, and we'll sell whatever house/land remains.
Our insurance company should give us the full amount that we are insured for for the contents of our house. The area that caught fire was the most expensive part of our house, with our computers, (musical) keyboard, a TON of software, etc. in that area. We also have to toss all of the baby's plastic toys because they could be toxic to him, all our plastic dishes, utensils, and kitchen tools, and there was smoke damage to everything in our house... some of it we will be able to clean, some of it is not cleanable. Anyway, we did a partial inventory of what was lost, and it easily adds up to our insured amount.
We put together a budget for what we plan on doing with this money, and we decided to turn our lemons into lemonade. As a fan of Dave Ramsey, sometimes I hear people call up and say "We're debt free! We sold all of our stuff on eBay, did this, did that, etc.". Well, we're not selling our stuff on eBay, but we have decided to NOT replace all of our stuff. We will replace some of our things, and use the rest of the money to pay off our car, pay off my student loan, and start an emergency fund.
We will have no debt payments, and our expenses will be lower because we will be living in family housing at dh's school. His job is right by our house, so we will save on gas because he can walk to class and is within minutes of work. The housing includes high-speed internet and cable television, so that will save us $100 a month as well. Since the house will be smaller than the one we were living in, we should have lower electricity bills as well. We're going to put together a budget, and for the first time in years, we will actually have a little money left over after paying for necessary expenses. So we should be able to slowly replace some of the other things that we lost over time, even if we don't buy them right away. And we won't be paying interest to the banks any more!
I don't recommend having a house fire to get out of debt, but at least in this case, we will be able to take a bad situation and use it for good.
While I was in church listening to this message, my house was on fire, unbeknownst to me. The smoke detector woke up my dh, who saved my computer and the pictures contained inside (my hero), and put out the fire with the help of my neighbor who brought along a water hose after he used up our fire extinguisher on it.
When I got home and discovered that our house had been on fire, I was shocked. I still find it a little hard to believe. Isn't that one of those things that happens to other people? After finding out the real important information, that my husband was okay (and yes, the pictures), in a way you just have to let it sink in and figure out what to do next.
It looks like we've figured out what to do next, and I'm pretty happy about it. We're going to move to a new house, whether or not our house ends up being totalled or repaired, and we'll sell whatever house/land remains.
Our insurance company should give us the full amount that we are insured for for the contents of our house. The area that caught fire was the most expensive part of our house, with our computers, (musical) keyboard, a TON of software, etc. in that area. We also have to toss all of the baby's plastic toys because they could be toxic to him, all our plastic dishes, utensils, and kitchen tools, and there was smoke damage to everything in our house... some of it we will be able to clean, some of it is not cleanable. Anyway, we did a partial inventory of what was lost, and it easily adds up to our insured amount.
We put together a budget for what we plan on doing with this money, and we decided to turn our lemons into lemonade. As a fan of Dave Ramsey, sometimes I hear people call up and say "We're debt free! We sold all of our stuff on eBay, did this, did that, etc.". Well, we're not selling our stuff on eBay, but we have decided to NOT replace all of our stuff. We will replace some of our things, and use the rest of the money to pay off our car, pay off my student loan, and start an emergency fund.
We will have no debt payments, and our expenses will be lower because we will be living in family housing at dh's school. His job is right by our house, so we will save on gas because he can walk to class and is within minutes of work. The housing includes high-speed internet and cable television, so that will save us $100 a month as well. Since the house will be smaller than the one we were living in, we should have lower electricity bills as well. We're going to put together a budget, and for the first time in years, we will actually have a little money left over after paying for necessary expenses. So we should be able to slowly replace some of the other things that we lost over time, even if we don't buy them right away. And we won't be paying interest to the banks any more!
I don't recommend having a house fire to get out of debt, but at least in this case, we will be able to take a bad situation and use it for good.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Local Governments Running Out Of Money...
Arizona has a law where they are supposed to keep their budget balanced. Right now, there is a $1.3 billion budget deficit, which has prompted governor Janet Napolitano to initiate a state hiring freeze.
This is not really a great surprise to me. My husband was hired by the state early last year, and before he got past his probationary period where they can't fire you without an act of legislation, they started letting go of people left and right in the office he was working in (a lot of the employees were hired under a rule that allowed them to be let go). Every day there was somebody else going, and my husband started looking for a job before they gave him his two weeks notice. To hear that they are not going to hire any new people (except in some critical areas like health care) is not a surprise.
The amount of children enrolling in Arizona schools is less than expected however, which people believe is due to the new law that punishes businesses for knowingly hiring illegal aliens, so that should help, as there is not as great a need for teachers, and they may even have to cut staff.
Another local government running out of money is the city of Vallejo, California. Reuters is reporting that they are considering filing for bankruptcy. I suppose I can see how a Southern California town could be headed for financial problems right about now. Housing prices have been through the roof for years, and I'm sure that Vallejo received a lot of money in property taxes especially, because it is a very nice town with some very nice houses (I used to live in nearby San Diego). Vallejo could have easily gotten used to receiving a certain amount of revenues in property taxes, and as property values fall, revenues fall. Also, with people spending less, there would be less money in sales taxes coming in.
I wonder how many other local governments are having trouble balancing their budgets right about now? Vallejo is not the only city in the country that has seen astronomical housing values plummet. Just recently, interest rates for bonds have gone up, which will cause more strain to some of these locations.
When your local government runs low on money, the effect can trickle down to everybody in the area. Will they have to make pay cuts? Raise taxes? Delay replacing items that wear out like fire trucks? Cut back the library hours?
I don't live in Vallejo, and as far as I know, Arizona is not making any other cutbacks that might affect me, but this could be a sign of things to come. I hope not. Hopefully the city, state, and county governments in this country will take a close look at their budget and make the proactive cutbacks needed so they can balance their budget.
After Katrina, many people were left with the feeling that you can't depend on the government for help at all times, and you need to try to be prepared. That is still a good goal, especially when the resources of government are tapped.
This is not really a great surprise to me. My husband was hired by the state early last year, and before he got past his probationary period where they can't fire you without an act of legislation, they started letting go of people left and right in the office he was working in (a lot of the employees were hired under a rule that allowed them to be let go). Every day there was somebody else going, and my husband started looking for a job before they gave him his two weeks notice. To hear that they are not going to hire any new people (except in some critical areas like health care) is not a surprise.
The amount of children enrolling in Arizona schools is less than expected however, which people believe is due to the new law that punishes businesses for knowingly hiring illegal aliens, so that should help, as there is not as great a need for teachers, and they may even have to cut staff.
Another local government running out of money is the city of Vallejo, California. Reuters is reporting that they are considering filing for bankruptcy. I suppose I can see how a Southern California town could be headed for financial problems right about now. Housing prices have been through the roof for years, and I'm sure that Vallejo received a lot of money in property taxes especially, because it is a very nice town with some very nice houses (I used to live in nearby San Diego). Vallejo could have easily gotten used to receiving a certain amount of revenues in property taxes, and as property values fall, revenues fall. Also, with people spending less, there would be less money in sales taxes coming in.
I wonder how many other local governments are having trouble balancing their budgets right about now? Vallejo is not the only city in the country that has seen astronomical housing values plummet. Just recently, interest rates for bonds have gone up, which will cause more strain to some of these locations.
When your local government runs low on money, the effect can trickle down to everybody in the area. Will they have to make pay cuts? Raise taxes? Delay replacing items that wear out like fire trucks? Cut back the library hours?
I don't live in Vallejo, and as far as I know, Arizona is not making any other cutbacks that might affect me, but this could be a sign of things to come. I hope not. Hopefully the city, state, and county governments in this country will take a close look at their budget and make the proactive cutbacks needed so they can balance their budget.
After Katrina, many people were left with the feeling that you can't depend on the government for help at all times, and you need to try to be prepared. That is still a good goal, especially when the resources of government are tapped.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
The Best Explanation of Tithing I've Ever Heard
January is always tithing month at my old church. While every service included a mini-sermon on tithing "if you don't tithe God can't bless you", a special emphasis is placed on tithing in January. Every single Sunday school lesson, and a few church sermons, are devoted to the topic. Have you ever tried to explain tithing to a Kindergartener? I have. My Kindergarten-aged child still doesn't really know the difference between a dollar and a penny... and we've been counting money nearly every day since October!
If you were having any problems in your life, my old church would ask "do you tithe?" It doesn't matter if your income is $3000 a month and your bills and necessities total $3100 a month, the solution to all your money problems is to tithe.
Every week you'd hear testimonials about how people were in debt and they started tithing, and a year later, they're magically debt-free. I'm sure that their stories are true, the people with the testimonials were trustworthy people. You hear over and over again "everybody can afford to tithe, because it's the FIRST 10% that goes to the Lord."
Okay, that's fine and good, I'm sure that I can give the first 10%. Even on the whopping $1500 we made this month, I could give $150 of that to the Lord. Then you have the mortgage of $1000, and I'm left with $350. My electric bill was $150 this month, so that leaves me with $200 to pay for gas, food, water, sewer, trash, the car payment, etc. It doesn't really work out, does it?
This month is an extreme example, but the $3000 for $3100 in bills is not. I'm sure that God could be a magic money machine that could provide me with an extra $444, every single month, so I can afford to tithe when ends don't meet by normal means, and I'm sure that there are some people out there that have a lot of faith that can make it work... but I'm not one of them. I see the Dave Ramsey budget laid out in front of me and I shake my head and say "it's not going to work."
We were talking about tithing at my new church, which is not something that my new pastor normally talks about. He said that the one time he did try preaching about tithing, someone had a heart attack or something like that, so he took it as a sign that he shouldn't preach any more about tithing, lol. But we had a Sunday school topic on it, so he gave a really good explanation, of what to do when your income doesn't cover, or just barely covers, necessary expenses like food, transportation to get to work and church, your bills, and a place to live?
He said that sometimes people get off the path, and then they want to start doing the right thing, but it's not always something that one can do overnight. Getting to the point where you're living beyond your means is one of those things. Or in our case, we were once living within our means, but our income was slashed, but our bills did not decrease. When we realize that we are living beyond our means, we need to repent of it, and then do whatever we can to get to the point where we can tithe. It would probably be a worse testimony to the Lord if we decided to tithe all of a sudden and stopped paying our mortgage as a result.
Not that we should go out, when we can't afford to tithe, and buy a new set of cookware or some fancy gizmo that we see on television when we can't tithe. We need to do what we can to tithe before we start buying those extras that we don't need.
It makes a lot of sense to me. I know miracles happen... my nephew is having a birthday party on Tuesday, and we really didn't have enough money to buy a gift for him. What do you know, the $25 Target gift card that I won back in November showed up today, so I can get a box of diapers and a present, without spending any money.
Maybe I should believe that God will show up on my doorstep magically with $1500, but unfortunately, I don't.
If you were having any problems in your life, my old church would ask "do you tithe?" It doesn't matter if your income is $3000 a month and your bills and necessities total $3100 a month, the solution to all your money problems is to tithe.
Every week you'd hear testimonials about how people were in debt and they started tithing, and a year later, they're magically debt-free. I'm sure that their stories are true, the people with the testimonials were trustworthy people. You hear over and over again "everybody can afford to tithe, because it's the FIRST 10% that goes to the Lord."
Okay, that's fine and good, I'm sure that I can give the first 10%. Even on the whopping $1500 we made this month, I could give $150 of that to the Lord. Then you have the mortgage of $1000, and I'm left with $350. My electric bill was $150 this month, so that leaves me with $200 to pay for gas, food, water, sewer, trash, the car payment, etc. It doesn't really work out, does it?
This month is an extreme example, but the $3000 for $3100 in bills is not. I'm sure that God could be a magic money machine that could provide me with an extra $444, every single month, so I can afford to tithe when ends don't meet by normal means, and I'm sure that there are some people out there that have a lot of faith that can make it work... but I'm not one of them. I see the Dave Ramsey budget laid out in front of me and I shake my head and say "it's not going to work."
We were talking about tithing at my new church, which is not something that my new pastor normally talks about. He said that the one time he did try preaching about tithing, someone had a heart attack or something like that, so he took it as a sign that he shouldn't preach any more about tithing, lol. But we had a Sunday school topic on it, so he gave a really good explanation, of what to do when your income doesn't cover, or just barely covers, necessary expenses like food, transportation to get to work and church, your bills, and a place to live?
He said that sometimes people get off the path, and then they want to start doing the right thing, but it's not always something that one can do overnight. Getting to the point where you're living beyond your means is one of those things. Or in our case, we were once living within our means, but our income was slashed, but our bills did not decrease. When we realize that we are living beyond our means, we need to repent of it, and then do whatever we can to get to the point where we can tithe. It would probably be a worse testimony to the Lord if we decided to tithe all of a sudden and stopped paying our mortgage as a result.
Not that we should go out, when we can't afford to tithe, and buy a new set of cookware or some fancy gizmo that we see on television when we can't tithe. We need to do what we can to tithe before we start buying those extras that we don't need.
It makes a lot of sense to me. I know miracles happen... my nephew is having a birthday party on Tuesday, and we really didn't have enough money to buy a gift for him. What do you know, the $25 Target gift card that I won back in November showed up today, so I can get a box of diapers and a present, without spending any money.
Maybe I should believe that God will show up on my doorstep magically with $1500, but unfortunately, I don't.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Highest Inflation in 17 Years
Woke up this morning to see an Excite article to see that inflation is the highest that it's been in 17 years.
Of interest to note, is that the two items that rose the highest last year were energy and food costs. Energy costs were up 17.4 percent, and food costs were up 4.1 percent. This is the highest that it's been since 1990.
The report, issued by the Labor Department, said that inflation outside energy and food costs were tame. I don't know about you, but energy and food costs just happen to be the two things in my budget that are not fixed, and there's only so far you can squeeze them.
Now I'm pretty good with the food costs, and there were several weeks last year that I got by with spending $25 for the week (out of necessity), and that included diapers, but that's primarily because I always shop for things when they are sale and I always have a surplus because I buy this way. People still have to drive to work and back though.
What does a typical person's budget look like? Not the numbers, but whether something is fixed or not. I'll give a breakdown of my budget, and I guess I may be semi-typical, other than I don't have credit cards:
Mortgage - fixed
Car payment - fixed
Student loan - fixed
Trash - fixed, but subject to increase
Sewer - variable
Water - variable
Internet - fixed, rates locked in for now
Vonage (phone) - fixed, but subject to increase
DirecTV - fixed, but subject to increase
Electricity - variable
Gas - variable
Food - variable
I may have other things but I can't think of them. The three largest items in my budget, outside of the mortgage and car payment, are variable. There's not much you can do to decrease them. And they are also the three items that went up the most in 2007.
Because I'm pretty budget conscious when it comes to groceries, I really notice when the prices go up. Surprisingly, around here, the price of ground beef has remained fairly stable, I can still get that for $2 a pound not on sale. There was even one week last year when they had beef on sale for $1 a pound and I was able to buy 20 pounds or so. Milk has gone up, however, as well as soda, processed foods like chili, bread... I even saw a higher price for frozen vegetables two weeks ago.
The question that I'm wondering is... why is the federal reserve keeping interest rates so low? Haven't they been saying for at least 10 years that inflation has not been a problem and that keeping interest rates low was promoting economic growth while keeping inflation down? Since inflation is going up, shouldn't they raise interest rates to try to curb it?
When my parents bought their home in the 1970s, they were lucky because they didn't have to pay a double digit interest rate on their mortgage. Interest rates that high are unheard of today. But maybe they should be closer than that, rather than sitting at the ridiculous lows that they've been at for nearly the past decade.
There is one downside, of course, to raising the interest rates... all those people in adjustable rate mortgages that are already crunched in their budgets. With skyrocketing home values, property taxes have gone up to keep pace with it... I know that our property taxes have gone up nearly $200 a month in the last 2 years... and we don't have an ARM. So I get that raising the interest rates will eventually cause more people to not be able to afford their homes and have to foreclose.
However, the whole point of an adjustable rate mortgage is that it is adjustable. There are usually limits on how much and how fast and ARM can adjust, but the whole point is that they do adjust. They are usually a very stupid idea, because you never know what the future can hold. Everything can seem rosy one minute, but anything can happen... especially when it comes to the economy.
If they don't raise the interest rates and inflation for the things you have to buy continues to skyrocket, everybody will suffer... including the people with ARMs. If they do raise interest rates, maybe the government can keep the dollar from freefalling and maybe we can curb inflation. Course raising interest rates will probably send the housing market into a tailspin and create a lot of foreclosures.
What a choice. Inflation and a weakening dollar, or the housing market going into a tailspin. Tough call.
Of interest to note, is that the two items that rose the highest last year were energy and food costs. Energy costs were up 17.4 percent, and food costs were up 4.1 percent. This is the highest that it's been since 1990.
The report, issued by the Labor Department, said that inflation outside energy and food costs were tame. I don't know about you, but energy and food costs just happen to be the two things in my budget that are not fixed, and there's only so far you can squeeze them.
Now I'm pretty good with the food costs, and there were several weeks last year that I got by with spending $25 for the week (out of necessity), and that included diapers, but that's primarily because I always shop for things when they are sale and I always have a surplus because I buy this way. People still have to drive to work and back though.
What does a typical person's budget look like? Not the numbers, but whether something is fixed or not. I'll give a breakdown of my budget, and I guess I may be semi-typical, other than I don't have credit cards:
Mortgage - fixed
Car payment - fixed
Student loan - fixed
Trash - fixed, but subject to increase
Sewer - variable
Water - variable
Internet - fixed, rates locked in for now
Vonage (phone) - fixed, but subject to increase
DirecTV - fixed, but subject to increase
Electricity - variable
Gas - variable
Food - variable
I may have other things but I can't think of them. The three largest items in my budget, outside of the mortgage and car payment, are variable. There's not much you can do to decrease them. And they are also the three items that went up the most in 2007.
Because I'm pretty budget conscious when it comes to groceries, I really notice when the prices go up. Surprisingly, around here, the price of ground beef has remained fairly stable, I can still get that for $2 a pound not on sale. There was even one week last year when they had beef on sale for $1 a pound and I was able to buy 20 pounds or so. Milk has gone up, however, as well as soda, processed foods like chili, bread... I even saw a higher price for frozen vegetables two weeks ago.
The question that I'm wondering is... why is the federal reserve keeping interest rates so low? Haven't they been saying for at least 10 years that inflation has not been a problem and that keeping interest rates low was promoting economic growth while keeping inflation down? Since inflation is going up, shouldn't they raise interest rates to try to curb it?
When my parents bought their home in the 1970s, they were lucky because they didn't have to pay a double digit interest rate on their mortgage. Interest rates that high are unheard of today. But maybe they should be closer than that, rather than sitting at the ridiculous lows that they've been at for nearly the past decade.
There is one downside, of course, to raising the interest rates... all those people in adjustable rate mortgages that are already crunched in their budgets. With skyrocketing home values, property taxes have gone up to keep pace with it... I know that our property taxes have gone up nearly $200 a month in the last 2 years... and we don't have an ARM. So I get that raising the interest rates will eventually cause more people to not be able to afford their homes and have to foreclose.
However, the whole point of an adjustable rate mortgage is that it is adjustable. There are usually limits on how much and how fast and ARM can adjust, but the whole point is that they do adjust. They are usually a very stupid idea, because you never know what the future can hold. Everything can seem rosy one minute, but anything can happen... especially when it comes to the economy.
If they don't raise the interest rates and inflation for the things you have to buy continues to skyrocket, everybody will suffer... including the people with ARMs. If they do raise interest rates, maybe the government can keep the dollar from freefalling and maybe we can curb inflation. Course raising interest rates will probably send the housing market into a tailspin and create a lot of foreclosures.
What a choice. Inflation and a weakening dollar, or the housing market going into a tailspin. Tough call.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
"Free" Public Schools? It May Be Cheaper To Homeschool
I've been noticing a trend for the last couple of years. I never really followed it before I started homeschooling my daughter, but it is truly amazing how much it costs to send children to the supposedly "free" public schools. While I may think that it costs a lot of money to homeschool my daughter (and so does my husband every time I tell him I need to buy a new textbook), it's not always cheap to send your child to public school any more either.
This article from the Houston Chronicle really is interesting to me. A mom in the article spent around $1500 on public school for her three children this year. That's pretty amazing, considering I spent $377.87 to buy books for my daughter this year, and I had to buy books and teacher's manuals for every class! My most expensive costs were a $42 set of CDs for a music class and another $42 on visuals for a Bible class. Of course, she probably didn't shop at Wal-Mart during their annual dirt-cheap school supplies sales, because she spent $75 on school supplies alone. I spent about $15, and that included 10 boxes of crayons, 2 dozen pencils, 2 boxes of markers, paper, folders, and notebooks for my husband that is attending Arizona State University. Office Max also had some great sales that she missed out on... they were selling pencils for $.01 for a week there.
Another lady spent $130 on novels for her child's English class. I never spent that much money on books for my college composition courses at the University of Southern California! What do you want to bet that most of those books won't even get read? $130 will buy a lot of books, especially if you go someplace like Half-Priced books.
Many schools charge for mandatory student ID cards. Another school in the article charged $1 for people forgetting to wear their ID card, or $5 if you lose it. I highly doubt that those things cost $5 to make. I can go to the local teacher's shop and have stuff laminated for a lot cheaper than that. Many schools also charge for parking, different elective classes, technology classes (are those mandatory nowadays), and PE uniforms (whatever happened to wearing shorts and a T-shirt from home to those classes).
It's getting so bad that some schools are hiring collection agencies! Who ever heard of such a thing? And then of course, you have the endless parade of fundraisers at many public schools... candy sales, wrapping paper sales, sales of useless knick-knacks, concession sales, etc.
A friend of mine (who chose to homeschool rather than send her child to public school) would have spent the following on fees had she sent her child to public school:
$150 book fees
$50 gym shoes
$50 (at least) for supplies
$250 for school lunches (they discourage bringing your own)
It's true that she included lunches, and of course I have to feed my daughter lunch every day. But we can always eat leftovers from the night before, and she begs me to make her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which is really cheap to make.
I also spend money on things like annual zoo passes, but then again, if my daughter was in public school I'd have to pay for her field trips as well, if she went on them. When she is older, I'll probably want to buy or rent microscopes and other scientific equipment as well. But the difference between those expenses and the expenses that people incur to send their children to public school, is that I can keep all the books I buy. I will be able to use all the nonconsumables for my son when he is old enough for school, which will save me a ton of money. And when my kids are done with the books, I can sell them.
While it isn't cheap to homeschool, public school isn't cheap any more, either. For those people who are not frugal with their money, it could cost more.
This article from the Houston Chronicle really is interesting to me. A mom in the article spent around $1500 on public school for her three children this year. That's pretty amazing, considering I spent $377.87 to buy books for my daughter this year, and I had to buy books and teacher's manuals for every class! My most expensive costs were a $42 set of CDs for a music class and another $42 on visuals for a Bible class. Of course, she probably didn't shop at Wal-Mart during their annual dirt-cheap school supplies sales, because she spent $75 on school supplies alone. I spent about $15, and that included 10 boxes of crayons, 2 dozen pencils, 2 boxes of markers, paper, folders, and notebooks for my husband that is attending Arizona State University. Office Max also had some great sales that she missed out on... they were selling pencils for $.01 for a week there.
Another lady spent $130 on novels for her child's English class. I never spent that much money on books for my college composition courses at the University of Southern California! What do you want to bet that most of those books won't even get read? $130 will buy a lot of books, especially if you go someplace like Half-Priced books.
Many schools charge for mandatory student ID cards. Another school in the article charged $1 for people forgetting to wear their ID card, or $5 if you lose it. I highly doubt that those things cost $5 to make. I can go to the local teacher's shop and have stuff laminated for a lot cheaper than that. Many schools also charge for parking, different elective classes, technology classes (are those mandatory nowadays), and PE uniforms (whatever happened to wearing shorts and a T-shirt from home to those classes).
It's getting so bad that some schools are hiring collection agencies! Who ever heard of such a thing? And then of course, you have the endless parade of fundraisers at many public schools... candy sales, wrapping paper sales, sales of useless knick-knacks, concession sales, etc.
A friend of mine (who chose to homeschool rather than send her child to public school) would have spent the following on fees had she sent her child to public school:
$150 book fees
$50 gym shoes
$50 (at least) for supplies
$250 for school lunches (they discourage bringing your own)
It's true that she included lunches, and of course I have to feed my daughter lunch every day. But we can always eat leftovers from the night before, and she begs me to make her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which is really cheap to make.
I also spend money on things like annual zoo passes, but then again, if my daughter was in public school I'd have to pay for her field trips as well, if she went on them. When she is older, I'll probably want to buy or rent microscopes and other scientific equipment as well. But the difference between those expenses and the expenses that people incur to send their children to public school, is that I can keep all the books I buy. I will be able to use all the nonconsumables for my son when he is old enough for school, which will save me a ton of money. And when my kids are done with the books, I can sell them.
While it isn't cheap to homeschool, public school isn't cheap any more, either. For those people who are not frugal with their money, it could cost more.
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