The original purpose of my blog

I have gotten a little off track from where I was going with this blog and started making it look like my desk. It's covered in a series of lists. I am a bit ADD. Lists help me function. They also allow me to procrastinate which is a problem.

The purpose of my blog was to offer realistic ways in which people can save money.

College is an expense, regardless of how you do it. Some people use community college as a way to do it the least expensive way possible. Others depend on grants or scholarships. Some work their way through holding down one or more jobs while attending in order to pay for it. Some suck it up, take the loans and cross their fingers that when the time comes to pay it off, they can.

I have always wanted to be a teacher. I went on a bit of a tangent with the community college and the photography degree. I don't regret it, but I should have known better.

My options where I am at are fairly limited. I live in a college town, but both are private colleges costing more than $20,000 per year. The closest state school is a little more than an hour away, and while dramatically cheaper, between the tuition and the drive it is still a lot of money.

My solution came with Western Governors University. It is an online program that has an IT college, a business college, a nursing college and a teachers college. Unlike the well known diploma mills like Phoenix, they are fully accredited not only as a college but by things like NCATE, or the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. They were also featured in Time Magazine.

The reason I am bringing this up is because the tuition is so ridiculously low that it seems kind of scammish. Is scammish a word? Probably not, but it suits me.

The WGU terms are 6 months long. My 4th term actually started yesterday. 12 competency units are considered full term. I pay just under $3000 for each term. Community college cost me more than that. You pay per term, not per credit, which means if you have the time, the drive and the dedication you can get through more classes per term, shorten the total amount of terms and save you money. This term I am starting with 13 credits, or competency units. If I can get through them quickly enough I intend on adding 4 more. It is self paced. Adding one or two extra classes per term allows me to graduate 6 months sooner.

The classes are pass or fail. There are no grades. However, the trick is that until you pass the assignments or the test, depending on the class, with a B or better, you don't pass the class. There is no sliding by with a C-.

So, tuition is $3000 per term. I also have a scholarship offered through WGU. Mine is the scholarship for rural math and science educators. It is $7500, paid $1500 over 5 terms. The terms of the scholarship include teaching at a rural school for 2 years after I graduate, and I have to maintain good academic standing. If I do not, I get to pay it back. Between that $1500 and my pell grant, my tuition is pretty much covered. I take student loans to cover books and other expenses, but my goal is to get to the point that I am not taking anymore loans.

I just thought that I would offer it up as an option for those looking for an education. If you are interested let me know, because if I refer you, you don't pay an application fee. My goal with this post was not so much to advertise, but share. WGU is probably the hardest school I have ever dealt with (including the 4 year school my husband started with) but I think in the end I will have a really good education.

The books are in

It's a week into October and I finally got the last of the books I need for schooling the girls this year.

One of the most frustrating thing about homeschooling on a budget is dealing with the curriculum. School supplies like paper, pencils, crayons and so on come so cheaply from the early bird school supply sales. I have so many 10 cent notebooks from 2 years ago that I only bought about 10 this year and I still think I will have leftovers. Finding things for the girls to read for pleasure is easy as pie as well. We have some great used book stores. Here is where I admit that despite being pretty tightly budgeted, I don't use the library. Why? Because I am terrible about getting books back on time. It is cheaper for me to buy used than to check out books. Isn't that awful? It's my weakness, and I have just given up on it. It's the same reason I splurge $10 a month on netflix instead of renting movies locally. Late fees are just expected from me.

Anyway, back to the original topic. School curricula is expensive. A textbook will easily run $60-$100. This wasn't so much an issue when my girls were younger. We were unschoolers, and there are a million and a half fun resources for teaching kids how to read, write and add. Now however I am trying to make sure my kids learn history, the scientific method, algebra. That requires a little more output.

This year, my kids are doing math out of college textbooks. No, I am not kidding. My older kid is a 6th grader. She is working out of Introductory and Intermediate Algebra for College Students. The first lesson? Fractions. It starts off at the perfect spot for what she already knows. It isn't that Intro Algebra is harder in college than it is in jr high. It just moves faster in a college environment. The way to make it work is to simply slow it down. It will take 2 years to make it through the book but it is more comprehensive than the typical grade level stuff.

The same can be said for science. Older is working Biology. Younger is working Weather. Again, instead of assigning chapters, I assign a couple of pages at a time. Sometimes it means explaining more of the words but really the girls have an amazing vocabulary, and most of what they don't know is defined in the text. Math, science, and the Arts are all being taught using college textbooks that my husband and I have used previously for classes.

History comes from two sources. Older kid is using The Last Two Million Years left here by my brother. It is in depth and covers a very broad range of history. I ordered the book I am using for the younger kid. For that history book, two writing books, and two grammar books I went to amazon.com. I am totally in love with their buy it used deals. The history book I ordered new runs $94. I paid $13 plus $3.99 shipping. I am also in love with amazons deals plus free shipping. The total for 5 books was $62. That is still less than the one book runs new.

The other thing I have learned is to backdate editions. What I mean is that for my classes, if they suggest I get the 9th edition of a book, I will order the 7th. At my school (WGU, will post about that later) it isn't a huge deal and it saves me hundreds of dollars per term in books. Most of the time the newer edition is almost identical to the older one. The only things I would be hesitant about is things that need to be cutting edge - computers, nursing, etc. But seriously, ethics haven't changed that much in the last 5 years.

Anyway, I told the girls 8:00 they had to get back to their assignments, and I have to supervise. Check out amazons used books. The savings is really worth it.

I have a test today

I am going in to a proctor to take a test on Ethics. I have been a little wrapped up in the past couple of days to do much studying, but I believe I have a fairly good grasp on the subject.

College is one of those things that just out of high school I thought I could do without. I got married right out of high school, and pregnant soon after. My husband was in the Marine Corps and while the first year was a struggle, things got easier the higher the rank. By the time he made sgt. we had no debt, always paid our bills on time, and we were doing really well.

Fast forward 8.5 years after he got out. Not having a degree hurts in more ways than I could ever imagine. In 2005, I decided that I loved photography enough that I was going to go to school for it. I spent about $14000 to find out that I am good at it, I got my AAS, and also found out that I hate portrait photography and the market in this area is full. I enjoyed every single minute I was in school but ouch.

So now, my husband and I are full time students again. I am again going with something I love, but something a little more likely to get me a job in the future. I am getting my degree in secondary education - biology to be specific. I will be certified 5-12 to teach biology or life science. As of right now there is a shortage of secondary math and science teachers. I have between 2-3 more years left on my degree. I should have enough credits to sub in another year which will help bring in some income.

Is income everything? No. But my kids are not going to be here forever. I can't see myself wandering around an empty house straightening pictures and waiting for my husband to get home. I would also like enough income that we can start really saving and perhaps one day retire instead of working ourselves right into the grave.

Can such an expense be justified? Absolutely. Look at it this way. Pell grants and scholarships help take a chunk out of my tuition. Everything else is student loans, and I do take extra to cover expenses I cannot cover on my own. I am figuring by the end of my BA with certification, I will be about $40,000 in debt with student loans, plus an additional $14,000 for my AAS. I am estimating the payment to be about $450 a month. My husband will probably add on another $350 a month, so $800 in student loans a month. That sounds like a lot until you consider the following. The only job I have ever been able to get is preschool or daycare where I made minimum wage or just over. Last year I made $8/hour. After taxes I made about $1000 a month. Absolute worse case scenario, we know we can live on one income, and that a min wage second income will pay off student loans and we are more knowledgable.

However, I anticipate actually teaching. Teachers in this area start around $36,000 a year, or about $3,000 a month. By teaching, even if my husband keeps his same job, we will be able to pay the student loans and still have extra money to live or put into savings for retirement.

And what about the kids? I homeschool true, but I am not against public school. I homeschooled my girls up through 2nd and 4th grade. They went to the local public school for two years. It wasn't working as well as I wanted so I am homeschooling again. The public school experience wasn't bad. It's just a long story that will have to be another post altogether. In any case, by the time I get to the student teaching portion of my degree, my oldest child will be a high school freshman, and my youngest will be in 7th grade. My goal was to get them at least through the elementary years as jr. high and high school give them more options. The timing works out very well for me.

I could go on all day about the subject, but I will end it here for now. It leaves me more to write another day. I just wanted to make the point that going into debt for education is one of the good debts that will in time, more than pay for itself.