America's Cheapest Family

Question: Could you please advise my family on how to keep costs minimal while homeschooling? Our kids are 4, 2, and 11 weeks old. I have taught in charter and public schools, but we are interested in homeschooling. I saw on your main site that you recommend Homeschooling for Excellence. I am reading it now :) However, any other advice on keeping the cost of homeschooling low would be greatly appreciated. THANK YOU!!

Demetria Elms

It's been about four years since we quoted our auto insurance. In that time, we've added one car — daughter Becky bought a gently used Toyota Tacoma (we now insure three cars on our policy) and we've added one new driver — Joe got his license.

When our current insurance company — Response Insurance — notified us that they were increasing premiums in the state of Arizona about 25 percent, it motivated us to start researching before the increase took effect.

Our son Joe saw this cartoon last week and brought it to our attention. No, we don't think it's true, but it sure seems like someone is running a racket when it comes to college text books.

This week the board of regents in Arizona announced that our state universities will probably be increasing tuition about 18 percent this year, while the universities will need to cut staff pay and / or positions. All of this because our state is experiencing an extreme budget crisis due to the recession.

The recessions is not over yet!

Three weeks ago Steve had a conversation with a woman who works at our local high school bookstore. He asked her how often high school math and English books come out with new editions. She pointed to a shelf full of math books and said that they were close to seven years old. Hmm, seven years huh?

What new information do students get in College Algebra, Trig or Statistics that is so earth shattering that the publishers constantly need to update their editions every year or two?

The new

We have been working like crazy for the past four months to get this web site up. We migrated it to this location earlier this week to get the bugs out. Our official launch date is Thursday, January 28. If you are a HomeEconomiser Newsletter subscriber, you will be receiving your email instructions next week.

While you're here, please look around. We are in the midst of putting up more content and de-bugging the site. So if you find a dead link or something else doesn't work, please contact us.