How Much Does It Cost to Homeschool One Child Per Year?

Search this question and you will get a range so wide it is useless — a few hundred dollars to several thousand — because the number depends almost entirely on two choices nobody asks you about before quoting an average.

So here is a different answer: one complete, itemised year, with every line priced, the shared costs properly allocated between two children, and the six things that get left out of a first-year budget. Work through it with your own subject list and you will have a real number in about fifteen minutes, which is fifteen minutes better spent than reading anyone’s average.

The Worked Year, Line by Line

Two children — Grade 5 and Grade 2 — over a 36-week year. Every price below is what one family recorded on their shopping list; prices change, so use the structure rather than the figures.

Subject Curriculum For Cost
Math Math-U-See Epsilon set Grade 5 $128.00
Math Math-U-See Beta set Grade 2 $132.00
Language arts All About Reading Level 4 Grade 5 $109.95
Language arts All About Reading Level 2 Grade 2 $109.95
Writing Writing With Ease 3 Grade 5 $32.50
Science Apologia Zoology 2 Both $72.00
History Story of the World Vol. 2 Both $54.90
Foreign language Duolingo Family, annual Both $89.88
Art Home Art Studio Grade 5 Grade 5 $38.00
Supplies Consumable workbook refills Both $38.75
Curriculum subtotal $805.93

Curriculum is not the whole bill. The rest of the year:

Category Spent
Curriculum and supplies $805.93
Co-op classes $150.00
Field trips — six, at $0 to $56 each $230.00
Extracurriculars $210.00
Total for the household $1,395.93

Now Split It Properly

Divide $1,395.93 by two and you get $697.97 each. That number is wrong in an interesting way, and getting it right is the difference between planning next year accurately and being surprised again.

Three of the curriculum lines were genuinely shared — science, history, the language app — plus the supplies. Everything else belonged to one child.

Amount
Shared across both children $255.53
Grade 5 only $308.45
Grade 2 only $241.95
Curriculum total $805.93

Allocate half the shared pot to each child and the curriculum cost per child is:

The younger child costs 85% of what the older one costs — not the 20% that “we’ll just reuse everything” implies. Math and reading, the two biggest lines, are level-specific and have to be bought twice. What actually shares well is content: history, science, art, a language subscription with a family plan.

That ratio is the single most useful planning number in this article, and it is the one a per-head average can never give you. The multi-child guide takes it further, including what happens on child three.

The Six Costs a First-Year Budget Misses

Every one of these is small enough to feel like it does not need a line, and that is exactly why the year overruns.

1. Consumables. Workbook refills, replacement manipulative pieces, lab supplies. $38.75 in the worked year, and it recurs annually while the $128 math set does not.

2. Printer costs. Ink and paper for a family printing worksheets four days a week is a real operating cost that never appears on a curriculum list.

3. Co-op fees beyond tuition. Registration, materials fees per class, and the fuel for a weekly round trip. The worked family’s $150 co-op line is tuition only.

4. Field trips. Six trips came to $230 — and two of them were $54 and $56, which is not what “museum day” sounds like when you plan it.

5. Extracurriculars. $210 here, and the line most likely to be mentally filed under “that’s not homeschool, that’s just sport”. It is still money leaving for a child’s education in a year you are budgeting.

6. Assessment or testing fees, where your state asks for them. Check your own state’s rules; this varies enough that guessing is worse than looking it up once.

Add those six and you have moved from a curriculum list to a budget.

The Budget Structure That Actually Constrains Spending

An item-level budget cannot be written in June because the items are not decided in June. A category budget can:

Category Budgeted Actual Over / under
Textbooks and workbooks $700.00 $677.30 −$22.70
Online programs $100.00 $89.88 −$10.12
Co-op classes $150.00 $150.00 $0.00
Supplies and materials $100.00 $81.35 −$18.65
Field trips and activities $100.00 $80.00 −$20.00
Extracurriculars $250.00 $210.00 −$40.00
Total $1,400.00 $1,288.53 −$111.47

(That second column is a partial-year snapshot of the same household — the point is the shape of the comparison, not the totals matching the full-year table above.)

Six categories, one number each, checked monthly. What makes it work is that the actual column is not typed by hand. If your purchase list has a cost and a purchased flag, the whole column is one formula repeated:

Actual (category)  =SUMIF(Purchases[Category], "Textbooks", Purchases[Cost])
Remaining          =Budgeted - Actual
% of budget used   =IF(Budgeted>0, Actual/Budgeted, 0)

Type the purchase once, on the day, into the list you were keeping anyway. The budget then maintains itself, which means it is still accurate in March — and a budget that is accurate in March is the only kind that changes a decision.

What This Means for Your Number

Run your own subject list through the same three steps:

  1. Price the per-child subjects first — maths and reading, level-specific, bought per child. This is usually 55–60% of curriculum spending.
  2. Price the shared subjects once — science, history, art, language — and divide by the number of children who will use them.
  3. Add the six missed costs as category lines, even if you have to guess. A guessed line gets corrected; a missing line gets exceeded.

Then log against it weekly. The full planner setup shows how the budget, the hours log and the grade record fit into one file, so that none of the three depends on remembering to update it separately.

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Homeschool Curriculum Planner & Budget — $14.99

The Curriculum Shopping tab is the table at the top of this page as a working sheet: 50 rows of subject, curriculum, publisher, format, cost, purchased flag, which child it is for, and notes. The Dashboard budget summary sums it into your five categories and returns total budget, total spent, remaining and percentage used — so the over/under table above is calculated rather than compiled.

Cost Comparison holds the two or three options you weighed per subject with price, format, grade range, teaching style, prep time and your rating, which is where the spending is actually decided. Field Trips & Extras carries date, location, subjects covered, cost, supplies and permission status, so the $230 line stops being six forgotten receipts. Year Review sets budgeted against actual by category at the end of the year and returns exactly what you were over or under — the sheet you will open first when you plan the next one.

Around them: an Attendance Tracker of 200 day rows splitting hours by subject, a Grade Tracker returning a percentage per assignment, a Weekly Schedule in half-hour blocks, a Resource Library, and a State Requirements tab for your own state’s days, hours, subjects and assessment rules.

Eleven tabs, 541 formulas, and a worked sample family already loaded — two children, a full shopping list, a term of hours — so you can see it running before you type anything. Works in Excel and Google Sheets. No macros, no add-ons.

Get the Homeschool Curriculum Planner & Budget →

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does it cost to homeschool one child per year?

The worked year on this page runs $436.22 for a Grade 5 child and $369.71 for a Grade 2 child in the same family, from $805.93 of curriculum plus $590 of co-op, field trips and extracurriculars. But the honest answer is that the range is enormous and driven almost entirely by two choices: how much you buy new rather than reuse or borrow, and whether you buy paid outside classes. Price your own subject list; a national average tells you nothing about your file.

What is the biggest homeschool cost people forget to budget?

Consumables. The core curriculum is a one-time purchase you remember; the workbook refills, printer ink, lab supplies and replacement manipulatives are recurring, individually small, and add up to a line nobody set. In the worked year, $38.75 of consumable refills was budgeted — the families who overspend are usually the ones who budgeted the $128 math set and nothing else.

Is the second child cheaper to homeschool?

Cheaper, but not free — and the gap is smaller than most families expect. In the worked example, $255.53 of the $805.93 curriculum was genuinely shared across both children (science, history, the language app, supplies), while $308.45 was specific to the older child and $241.95 to the younger. Allocating the shared half to each gives $436.22 and $369.71: the second child costs 85% of the first, not 20%.

How do I set a homeschool budget before I know what curriculum I'm buying?

Set it by category rather than by item: textbooks and workbooks, online programs, co-op classes, supplies and materials, field trips, extracurriculars. Six categories with a number against each is a budget you can actually shop against, because the constraint arrives at the moment of the decision. An item-level budget cannot be written before the decisions it is meant to govern.

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Plan the Year, Price It, and Keep the Record That Proves It

The Homeschool Curriculum Planner & Budget — 11 linked tabs and 541 working formulas, with a worked sample family already loaded — two children in Grade 5 and Grade 2, a full curriculum shopping list, a term of logged hours and a set of graded assignments — so you can see it running before you type anything. A Dashboard holding your school year dates, the days and hours your own state asks for, your children with ages and grade levels, a budget summary across five categories that returns spent, remaining and percentage used, an attendance summary returning days completed, days remaining, hours logged, hours remaining and your attendance rate, and a ten-subject overview that turns weekly hours into annual hours across a 36-week year; a Curriculum Shopping tab of 50 rows holding subject, curriculum, publisher, format, cost, purchased flag and which child it is for, which is what the spent figure is actually summing — so the budget updates itself from the list you were keeping anyway; a Cost Comparison tab putting two or three options per subject side by side on price, format, grade range, teaching style, prep time and your own rating, because the decision that sets the year's spending is made before anything is bought; a Weekly Schedule laid out in half-hour blocks Monday to Friday per child; an Attendance Tracker of 200 day rows splitting instruction hours across Math, Language Arts, Science, History and two subjects you name, totalling each day on its own and filling in the day of the week from the date; a Grade Tracker returning a percentage per assignment from score and max score; a Resource Library for books, websites, apps and logins with a rating; a Field Trips & Extras tab holding date, location, subjects covered, cost, supplies, permission and completion; a State Requirements reference tab where you record your own state's notification deadline, required subjects, minimum days, minimum hours, assessment type and record-keeping rule in one place instead of in a browser tab you will lose; and a Year Review tab setting budgeted against actual by category and returning what you were over or under, alongside what worked and what to change. Nothing is locked — every formula is visible and editable, and every state figure is an input you fill in yourself rather than a number baked into the file. Works in Excel and Google Sheets, no macros and no add-ons. It organises your own records; it is not legal advice and does not interpret your state's homeschool law.

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