Take care of the pennies….

Deciding to home educate can often have financial implications, it did for us anyway.  In order to home educate my eldest daughter I needed to give up my teaching salary and learning to survive on one, average, income has been a whole journey in itself.

We have found some financial pros to home educating…

• cheap off peak ‘ educational’ days out

• Cheaper term time holidays

• birthday and Christmas wish lists are smaller without the latest classroom crazes.

• less birthday parties to attend

• no school uniform/shoes to purchase

• no childcare costs

However of course the money needs to stretch.  I have had an interest since purchasing our current house to overpay our mortgage and we have made some small irregular overpayments.  I started to investigate this more seriously lately.  My initial thought was that we didn’t have enough spare to overpay and make a difference.  But I began to play around with this overpayment calculator and discovered that just £30 extra per month would clear our mortgage 1 year 8 months early and save us about £4500 in interest.  In fact for every £1 overpaid that is £1 interest will never have to be paid on again.  I was pretty amazed that a relatively small amount could make such a difference.  Of course I have more ambitious plans in mind and I would love to surprise hubby with a cleared mortgage earlier than expected.  Shh don’t tell!