Money-Wise Monday!

   So here is something special that I have thought of for Mondays. From now on Mondays are going to be Money-Wise Mondays on this blog. What does that mean? It means that I will tell you how we save money, review a product that we have used that was worth it's money, or give you frugal recipe or a tip. Bringing up three kids (until Monkey In-Waiting is born, and then it's four) on a budget teaches you a thing or two about money.

All three monkeys playing guitar

   Money wasn't always a big deal for us before. But in December of 2007, Daddy injured his arm and was not able to work in the busiest time of the year. Girly Monkey was only 2 months old and Christmas was just around the corner. Since he didn't have personal injury insurance, he was not covered. Money was very tight that year. But that was only the beginning of it. In 2010, with the fall of our economy, work became scarce.
On top of it the company that Daddy was contracting from changed ownership and asked Daddy to sign a contact that was hugely against common sense. For example one of the clauses was that if the company misinterprets in reporting to Revenue Canada how much they payed to their contractors the contractor would be the one responsible for any fines and they would not be held liable. This was just one of many clauses that seemed very sketchy. Daddy and I sat down and discussed the implications of signing this contract. It was all the more scary since our business was not incorporated, so in the event that things would go bad and the company came after him we could have our house on the line. Being incorporated company would protect Daddy and our family in the event that things didn't go as planned, but we couldn't afford to start and incorporated company. So January 2010, Daddy refused to sign the new contract and was not given any more contracts from the company. Money was even more tight then. We used up any savings we had. Daddy even tried to flip a mobile home with his dad, but even though that provided some profit, they both decided they wouldn't do it again. And then in July Little Monkey was born. I had to learn to run the household on very little money. Daddy went looking for new companies to contract from, and even incorporated his business and sold his own jobs, but the economy was down and renovations are the first thing that people put off when money is tight. Eventually, in November of 2010, Daddy went back to the original company that he worked for and signed the contract under his incorporated business. Unfortunately that did not help either. By this time the company has hired so many installers that there was not enough work to keep any of them busy. And we were hugely in debt. Life became a daily struggle to make do with whatever money we had. And we had 3 kids to feed. clothe, pay for their activities, etc. So this is how I learned to be frugal and have Money-sense. And here I am sharing some things that I have learned along the way.

Home printed school diplomas.

   Since it's back to school tomorrow I thought that I should talk about how we homeschool on a budget. Homeschooling can be very expensive if you decide to buy a lot of ready-made curriculum. Some math systems can run in the hundreds of dollars, and some history books are just as expensive. But what to do when you can't spend that much, or you just don't want to? A real life saver for us is the grant we get through our Homeschool / Distance Learning School. 150 dollars for each registered child goes a long way when you know how to stay on a budget. I have bought series of Math books that retail for about 70 dollars a piece. The nice thing is that they cover 2 years in one book and I can reuse them with each Monkey. There is four of them total :Math to Learn,  Math to Know,  Math at Hand, and Math on Cal. The downside to them is that they don't have workbooks with them at the store If I wanted to have the workbooks brought in  they would be over 100 dollars each. That's too expensive for me. So I went with JUMP Math series. Their workbooks cost 11 dollars a piece and you need 2 parts for each school year, for each grade. They looked pretty good too. So that got Math out of the way.

    For copywork, I go on the internet and find quotes from classic children's books, or from science website and copy them. Then I make a list of them (one for every week - 30 in total) and buy an inexpensive writing practice book and have Monkeys copy them into those pages. That's very inexpensive way to teach copywork plus I can reuse the quotes for other kids. The biggest money saving tip is to utilize a local library. Local libraries have vast array of living books plus they also stock documentary DVD's on many different topics. We also pay a little extra to get the premium channels (like Discovery, History, National Geographic). It's only about 10 dollars extra a month but if you can tape the shows and watch them when you are exploring that topic then it's worth it. I have a list of about 60 different educational shows that I have saved over summer and will show them to the kids when we are learning about that particular topic. Finally, another money saving tip is to use internet. Internet has a large amount of good information for homeschoolers (if you know how to sift through the garbage that can be on the internet and go to reputable sites). I use it for anything from finding quotes, to printing artist paintings for picture study, to watching art or guitar lessons. It's very convenient and frugal.
   Now to get ready for first day back to Homeschool tomorrow. I hope you all have a great first day back!!!!