Ahhh….OK now….ah what was I doing? . . . . . Oh, I remember, I was getting ready to write a post about the brick wall that has hit our home school. No kidding, there we were working diligently on homeschooling and WHAM! -  it jumped right in front of us.

Seriously, five plus years into home educating and this is the first time I’ve felt it would be easier to trudge a mile in waist deep mud than finish assignments or anything for that matter. Brand new experience and I’m not liking it so much. We are all so ready for a break, a long, long as in really, really long. But it seems soooo far away, especially now with that brick wall in the way! Sigh. Bigger sigh.

Read the rest of this entry »

We are a nation of consumers. We want what we want when we want it. Perhaps our plastic “money” should contain the slogan “Buy Now, Pay later.”

Gone are the principles of previous generations of “saving until you can afford it” and “when the money in the envelope is gone, it’s gone. Period. Make do.” We are over our heads in debt.

Or as US News and World Report puts it:

For more than four decades, our shopaholic nation has shown an insatiable desire to spend until our credit cards melt. … Indeed, it often seems that we have defined ourselves by our ability to buy supersized everything, from McMansions to tricked-out SUVs to 60-inch flat-screen televisions—all enabled by decades of cheap credit.

Consider just a few statistics from, interestingly enough, CreditCards.com:

• 55 percent of credit card users keep a balance on their credit card
• The average American with a credit file is responsible for $16,635 in debt, excluding mortgages
• The average credit card indebted young adult household now spends nearly 24 percent of its income on debt payments
• Total U.S. consumer debt (which includes credit card debt and noncredit-card debt but not mortgage debt) reached $2.55 trillion at the end of 2007, up from $2.42 trillion at the end of 2006
• Young Americans now have the second highest rate of bankruptcy, just after those aged 35 to 44.
• U.S. consumers racked up an estimated $51 billion worth of fast food on their personal credit and debit cards in 2006

Book One: How to Understand Economics in One Hour

This year we tackled a ½ credit course of Civics. A large part of our course was a study of Economics, which I confess, I knew very little about. Our primary text for economics, which I highly recommend, Read the rest of this entry »

Do you agree that we as a country are in big financial trouble? Do you think it would be difficult to find an American adult who would disagree?

At every level, from families to local governments to the national government, we don’t live within our means; we overspend. The mindset of  “buy now, pay later” permeates our culture. We are up to our eyeballs in debt! As Dave Ramsey succinctly puts it:

“We want it all and we can borrow to get it all before we can afford it all.”

Consider these alarming statistics about students who graduate from high school:

• They lack basic skills in the management of personal financial affairs (1)
• Many are unable to balance a checkbook (1)
• Most simply have no insight into the basic survival principles involved with earning, spending, saving and investing. (1)
• Of the 6,000 students who took the Jump$tart personal finance survey in 2006, 62% received failing scores with 60% being the lowest passing grade. (2)
• A study of 1,065 teens found that 21% of 18 and 19-year-olds have credit cards. (2)
• Nearly 1/3 of high school seniors already use a credit card (2)
• By the time they reach their senior year, 56 percent of students carry four or more credit cards, with an average balance of $2,864. (2) Read the rest of this entry »

More and more, students, including homeschoolers, are using the internet for research. However, just because something is on a website does not mean it’s credible, reliable, or even true. For a few dollars, anyone can put up a website up, saying anything they want about any subject.

Netcraft, an internet research firm, reported in January 2009, that there are nearly 188 million websites, with almost 75 million of them active! Let’s look at these big numbers from a different angle: if you were to spend one minute, 365 days, 24/7 on each active website, it would take you nearly 143 years to visit all of them! Whoa!!!

Okay… we have nearly 75 million active websites, who is responsible for evaluating the reliabilty and accuracy of online content? Simply put, you are. There are no “Internet Police” monitoring websites and their content.  It’s up to you, the internet user.

The question is, how do we teach our home educated kids to whether or not a website is a reliable and trustworthy internet resource?

Helpful tips to determine if a website is a reliable resource: Read the rest of this entry »

In a previous post, I discussed that college education may not be right for everyone. For some, both parent and teen know with certainty, that college is the right choice and that’s wonderful! However for those who aren’t so certain, there’s another option that homeschool graduates my want to consider – The Gap Year.

Sadly, I’ve spoken with many college graduates who, after graduation, found very lucrative jobs, lamenting, “I hate what I’m doing!” Many confess they would like to quit but can’t because they are up to their eyeballs in student loan and/or credit card debt. Some consider going back to school to study something different, but still don’t know what they want to do. One recent college grad I spoke with, just up & quit her very big-bucks job, because she couldn’t stand it. Would a gap year have helped these students? I don’t know. Would it have hurt them? No, I don’t think so.

The gap year concept – taking a year off between high school graduation and college – is a growing concept in this country. Many high school advisors and counselors are now recommending it to their students. Furthermore, high schools have begun having “Gap Year Fairs”, showing and promoting the many opportunities available to a high school grad during their year off from formal education.

According to an article in USA Today, as colleges’ witness more and more “gappers” arriving on campus with sharper focus, motivation and maturity Read the rest of this entry »

Only recently did I become aware of the threat of a new law and it’s affect on our purchasing and/or selling used and/or new homeschool books or curriculum. I want to make sure you are aware of it as well.

In August 2008, the Consumer Product Safety Act was signed into law. As I understand it, the intent of the law, simply put, was/is to protect children ages 12 and under from children’s products containing unsafe levels of lead and phthalates. The law goes into effect February 10th 2009.

So how can this new law affect your ability to buy or sell your homeschool books and curriculum?  Read the rest of this entry »

Family-court action could convince appellate court not to interfere with home schooling freedoms in California.

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