Unusual Ways to Save Money on Homeschool Supplies

* This post may contain affiliate links or sponsored content. *

Homeschooling supplies are expensive! Use these unusual tips to save money on homeschool supplies.

Get the Right Printer

Our last printer was a laser jet that printed quickly. However, when it came time to buy ink refills, the ink was $10 cheaper than buying a whole new printer. We couldn’t have that, so we purchased a full ink model with cheaper ink. Now we can purchase a brand new ink cartridge for about $20, which is still expensive since we use about one every month or two.

If you shop around online and buy ink in bulk you can save even more per cartridge. I saw a few cartridges for as little as $8 each, which is a huge savings of over $200 per year just for ink.

Stick to Essentials

Sticking to essentials seems like an obvious way to save money on homeschool supplies, except if you are anything like me, you don’t. I find it incredibly hard to resist the little $20 supplement games, books, and activities. Last year, I spent between $200 and $300 on supplies that we didn’t need. Most of these were the “fun” activities that I thought would make school more fun, but they haven’t added any additional value to our school. Next year, I plan to buy even fewer of these items.

At our house, we’ve found that if we have a book for each essential subject (at 4th grade it is math, language arts, science, and logic), it is easy to find things around the house (or at the library) for free to fill in for the rest of the subjects.

Use Wood Pencils

I love mechanical pencils more than anything, and we used to only use mechanical pencils. But buying new pencils every few weeks adds up fast. Regular wood and lead pencils last a lot longer and are cheaper to begin with. If you have multiple children, wood pencils are an easy way to save a surprisingly large amount of money on homeschool supplies.

Try Cloud-Based Supplements

The cost of supplements is what drives up the cost of homeschooling for us. Although printables are amazing (and I often make my own), even they can become too expensive after a while. That is why I love cloud-based supplements for school. We have several tablet/phone apps that were either free or under $2 which we use to supplement our book work. There are hundreds of sites online where you can find educational games for free. We recently signed up for a lifetime subscription to Always Ice Cream, which while it wasn’t free, goes all the way up to 8th grade and covers dozens of topics.

But if you’re even more strapped for cash, Khan Academy is excellent and goes all the way up through 12th grade. I imagine as Monkey enters middle school we will be using Khan Academy a lot more often.

Share Books with Other Kids/Families

Most families do not have $600 per year to spend per child, particularly if they have more than two children. One easy way to get around this is to have children share books. For the most expensive subjects, I have my children write their answers on paper so the book can be reused for another child. If you have children close in age, you could purchase a book that is slightly advanced for the younger child and teach them from the same books.

If you have a friend with children of similar ages, you can trade books so that the first year, your child uses a certain curriculum and next year their child does and vice versa. This can nearly halve the cost of curriculum.

I’ve found these tricks have saved us quite a bit of money over the years. Just a little out-of-the-box thinking can ensure your homeschool journey does not cost an arm and a leg.