Way back when gas hit $2.00 per gallon and some farsighted fools began predicting three, I remember hearing a story on the radio about why the rising prices had not seemed to effect the economy any. Mr. Guest Expert answered that the rise still fell into what most Americans considered their discretionary spending. The price difference really did not mean anything to anyone, except maybe forgoing that cup of coffee at the gas station if they really felt the need to compensate what the tank was guzzling. Mr. Expert quoted a magic number…4%. When the gas prices reached four percent of a family’s budget, we’d begin seeing it change behavior and effect the economy in more measurable ways.
Well, the sign at the gas station between here and town now reads $4.04. Only a dime more than what it is in town, but that dime seems to carry the gas price into an entirely new domain. Gas costs more than milk…it used to be cheaper than water. It also now takes ten percent of my husband’s pay check to fill the car. And we get 41 miles to the gallon. See, my husband has a 120 mile drive to work.
Now, $4 a gallon gas has a different cost for us, as well. A real cost.
- It means we won’t be going to the farmers’ market and participating in the Lincoln Safari this year.
- It means we will only be able to go to the zoo, the children’s museum and the Y each only once per month.
- It may mean forgoing the Y pass altogether.
- It means we will lose the pleasure of lingering over the books at the library, attending story hour and just browsing. Instead, we will be ordering our books online and picking them up when the bookmobile stops in our town.
- It also means that my summer plans…the ones I have been working on since winter…are fading fast. We were going to read The Roadside History of Nebraska together, on location, all over the state of Nebraska. Every week, we were going to pick a new location, read about it and visit as many of the locations mentioned as we could so that we could really get to know this state we call home a little better.
I had another hope with that summer plan as well. I had hoped the time spent traveling, setting up and breaking down camp and exploring together would bring more of a sense of family unity to our home. A shared purpose in shared discovery. But as I begrudgingly let go of my plans, I realize that this may await us here in our own backyard as well.
After all, with only one trip into town a week, we are going to have a lot more time on our hands. And the kids have as much fun with the tent and butterfly net in the backyard as they would at Toadstool Park.
How have rising prices affected your homeschool? Do you expect them to? Or will you be making sacrifices in other areas? And have you found any unexpected benefits in subtle changes to your lifestyle?
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And an announcement: I’m being interviewed by Chad over at Grizzly Groundswell tonight on his show at blogtalkradio. I’ll be talking about the terribly fascinating topic of me. So I don’t really have much to say, but it should be interesting to hear me stumble around for words. Anyway, you can follow the link to listen and to call in if interested. I’m on at about 7:40. Central time? That might have been a good question to ask.
Principled Discovery is a place to stop and discuss news and information related to faith, family and particularly education. Pour yourself a cup of tea and join the conversation! 
Prices haven’t risen high enough yet that I’m taking our road trips off the table. However, I am cutting back on other things to make up the difference.
We’ll take fewer day trips this summer. Not as many weekend drives up into the mountains just idly exploring. We’ll stick closer to home.
We are making one trip to Louisiana to pick up Butterfly, but we will miss out on the Fourth of July family gathering.
One trip this summer is all I can manage. Also, our plans to drive five hours to visit friends near Chattanooga are out the window. Maybe in the fall…
We’re considering giving up the Y, too.
I really don’t want to give up the Y, but we have been trying to save money. We want to put in a basement…not to mention pay off the house. But everything we have done so far to save has been eaten up by the rising prices.
You know what is silly? When my blog started making a little money, we decided to use that for little extra things for our homeschool…an occasional admission fee to an event, a book, an educational toy. I was able to take the kids to see a 3D whale movie and buy some toy whales, but after that, it all just got absorbed into our budget. It isn’t very much money, but I was really looking forward to having a little each month that wasn’t really allocated to anything.
It is hard if you have already cut most everything. We don’t have cable (never have), hardly ever eat out, and already buy everything second hand. I’m thankful my husband’s job is close, and our expenses are low, but it is hard to see any extra become the way to pay for gas. At least milk seems cheap now.
We make one trip to town a week, doing all of our errands after piano and the park.
We were going to take one trip a month and start exploring Texas, but we will just have to start close to home, which is probably only what we would have time for anyway.
I am starting a local home school support group, instead of driving the 15 miles to attend park days and mom’s fellowships that I’ve been attending for the last 4 years.
My eldest daughter takes Latin once a week from our pastor, along with three other people. I don’t know what it is in miles, but it’s a half hour drive. However, I don’t really feel I can give it up. She’s already put in three years and is partway done with the last book; they’ll finish it next year. We’ll just have to find the money from someplace else, I suppose.
You know, I have been in this place for years.
We have never had the “spare cash” to go out whenever we wanted and since hubby and I both work from home going out is an extra. So, this is actually affecting us in the regular budget since our home schooling was already “stay at home as much as possible”.
I completely agree that the gas prices has changed our homeschooling. We used to have one weekly activity, but that has quickly changed to every other week and sometimes less. Luckily our library is VERY close so that is the same and has become one of our activities. Using public transportation is not really easy with 2 kids, but we are deciding we may use it a few times this year. Sadly, it is going to be more activities at home and close to home.
That gas station pic is priceless!
We will probably defer a family road trip to see cousins in another state, or arrange to meet them halfway. We already use bicycle and public transportation for everyday travel as much as possible.
Barb (and others)– would using internet technologies like live chat, etc., be an option to reduce travel? You might be able to study Latin by “meeting” with the pastor/teacher and other students online, with less frequent face-to-face meetings to celebrate their accomplishments in person. I don’t think Live Mocha has a Latin-learner community yet, but I’d think there would be something that a group of students could arrange to reduce travel burdens and still support each other’s learning.
CircleReader, your comment reminds me of something else I heard recently.
Apparently, some companies are trying to reorganize their schedules in order to accommodate greater flexibility for their employees, such as allowing them to work from home once per week.
Where my dad works, this isn’t possible, but they are thinking about moving to ten hour days to stop requiring people to come in on Saturdays.
Right now, it saves everyone one trip and eases the budget a little. In the long run, however, this could make the workplace a little more flexible. Imagine what would be possible for women who want to work from home or work part time? Just by changing the corporate structure to accommodate current employees, we might find the workplace more flexible for all.
There are no vacations planned and usually never are, here. Driving has always been done with an eye to combining and eliminating trips. Etc. — we always live frugally. Or maybe we are just used to being broke.
DH is in construction so we are also used to uneven income and so are our creditors.
The kids’ activities are not all that expensive or numerous but everything else is on the chopping block as needed. No new anything without careful thought.
OTOH, I haven’t been able to make those extra principal payments to pay down the mortgage in 3 months. That’s a long-term hit to the budget though. A few good months and I will be back on track there.
We definitely feel it but gas prices haven’t eliminated much here — because there wasn’t much to eliminate?
And, really, anyone who is getting any sort of vacation or travel this year is doing better than a lot of people.
Nance
And, yes, Dana, a lot could be done on the corporate level and with schedules to make things work better for families.
Nance
Indeed! The internet has loosened the grip of the Education Industrial Complex a little on families. Not that it has not been tried before, at the Kellog Company in the 1930’s, for instance; our society just did not muster the will to hold on to work arrangements that support family and community interaction. And perhaps we have been in danger of losing the imagination to do so as well.
(You can read the history of this in an article from Orion Magazine titled “The Gospel of Consumption.” But that’s probably a post for another day…any takers?)
Since gas in California has been much higher than the rest of the nation for awhile, we cut back right after Thanksgiving. No enrichment programs that were more than 15 miles away… and now they have to be here in town or it’s a no go. Field trips have to be within a 20 minute drive. No summer camp… and our travel plans have been put on hold for who-knows-when.
In fact, so much goes to gas that many things we can do at home have been cut as well.
Gas is currently at $4.24 a gallon here in town! My husband’s truck takes diesel at $5.19 a gallon.
Yikes…we cut back awhile ago, hoping to save money. It is frustrating that most of it has just been consumed by rising fuel and grocery prices.
We are fortunate in that we make decent money. I always smile when people start talking about homeschooling being only for the wealthy because we aren’t exactly wealthy, but we do better than most homeschoolers I know. We’re one of the few couples I know whose income increased when the wife decided to stay home.
But that 120 mile drive hubby has to work is starting to really take its toll.
One question to ask is, What is your preparation?
Hard times are coming. Are you preparing?
Have you got rid of those credit cards?
Is your back yard being tilled for growing?
Can you downsize your home to free up cash?
I’m sure many questions and struggles abound but now is surely the time to tackle these questions.
Interesting — our power of story unschooling these days is pretty much the opposite of “woe is me” no matter what the price of gas is doing!
Dana, my comment got long and wandered into power of story and sense of community, so I’m posting it at Snook — with art!
Hmmm….I’m not a woe is me kind of person, nor was this a “woe is me” kind of entry. Everything presents both challenges and opportunities, which is why I closed with the positive of increased time together at home.
I don’t see it as an unschooling issue. Just whether or not you choose to be controlled by your environment or choose to take control of your response to changing conditions.
“Homeschooling” will not be affected any, nor with our children suffer any as a result of a few things being cut. I was really looking forward to our weekend trips, and now we are looking forward to trips to our backyard. Not quite the same, but sufficient.
Hmmm from me too — I did see and appreciate the positive emphasis at the close of the original post, but most of the comments do sound more “woe is me” — seeing more challenge opportunity — which is why I decided to comment and draw that distinction in the way I respond to gas prices. But maybe I just failed to understand all this cutback, stay home, hard times talk the way it was meant?
And the headline is “Economic Woes and Homeschooling” so I (surprisingly?) thought that what this discussion is about, the current economic effects on our own home-educating, if any?
Dana said, “I don’t see it as an unschooling issue” but “unschooling” is simply how we homeschool — our family’s way of learning at home — so I am confused about why gas prices would be a homeschooling issue but not an unschooling issue? Again, maybe I’m misunderstanding but if so, I’ll need some help seeing where.
As homeschoolers, the taxpaying property owners in our areas are not footing the bill for the extra field trips and activities that we engage in, so gas prices can have an affect on the ability of home educators to continue in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed, regardless of what educational method one might choose.
One way gas prices might affect us is that I am saving for a new computer, and it may take me longer to do so as we stretch our budget to accommodate necessary travel.
I don’t have any economic woes…that is just how it is being portrayed consistently. I just adopted the public meme.
There are effects on homeschooling and there isn’t really any way around that. Whether or not it effects your attitude toward homeschooling or anything is a different matter entirely.
I was mostly interested in how things have effected people’s homeschooling plans and what adjustments are being made. “Education” is a pretty top priority among homeschoolers and it is an easy area to justify extra expenditures that are not really necessary.
I guess I don’t see “woe is me.” Just people sharing how things are affecting them.
so I am confused about why gas prices would be a homeschooling issue but not an unschooling issue?
Sorry, I was unclear what I was responding to. When you stated “our power of story unschooling these days is pretty much the opposite of ‘woe is me’” I took it to mean that you attributed your attitude specifically to unschooling.
That is why I responded that I didn’t see that as an unschooling issue, but just one of general attitude and how we respond to challenges. I’m not an unschooler, and am not stuck on the negatives. Just curious what effects it all is having and if it has reached the point of having an effect.
We are in a unique situation living 120 miles from where my husband works, so I don’t know that gas prices necessarily effects everyone’s budget quite to the level it does us. But recognizing that isn’t the same as feeling sorry for myself over the whole thing.
I think there are huge benefits to be reaped by this minor stress on budgets. It forces people to re-evaluate their values, and it is forcing corporations to re-evaluate their needs to see if maybe employees might be able to work from home more.
That can only be good. We don’t need to be so focused on consumption and trying to find fulfillment and contentment outside ourselves.
After all, I read an interesting book about a group of people whose contentment shone through enough to have a significant effect on the lives around them…a group of Christians in a N. Korean prison camp.
We carry our contentment or lack thereof into every situation. It is internal, not external. But in our consumption driven economy, we tend to focus on the external. “If I only had….then I’d be happy.” But I doubt that changes no matter how high the gas prices go. Too many people see a middle class lifestyle as their right rather than something they have earned. There is not much appreciation for the incredible wealth we have.
Like Nance mentioned, “And, really, anyone who is getting any sort of vacation or travel this year is doing better than a lot of people.”
But really, the amount this affects our daily lives and expenditures shows just how well off we are as a country. Cars, fuel, etc., are simply taken for granted and we don’t think about it all that often.
Sunniemom, that is where it has effected us most. We are trying to save for a basement. Six people in 900 square feet is a little cramped. Not that it is a “need,” but it sure would be nice.
Thanks Dana, for unfurrowing my brow.
I feel quite fortunate in that we live so centrally to everything we do. Two miles from where dh works, 1-1/2 miles to the library and bank, 2-1/2 miles to the grocery store, WalMart, Target, mall, Sam’s Club, Meijer… and 8 miles to church. Oh, and 3 miles to McDonald’s.
I remember though, when I was a kid, we lived in the sticks near Huntington WV, and my dad worked at Ashland Oil in KY. I think it took him over an hour to drive to work.
We didn’t take vacations or go out to eat when I was a kid, and as a family now we have never taken an ‘out-of-town’ vacation. I don’t miss it, maybe because it was never a part of my life? We do day trips here and there, but other than going to weddings, funerals, reunions… we don’t travel long distances. If we get farther than 45 minutes from home, the kids start asking how long before we get back. Our favorite thing to do for vacation is to unplug the phone and live incommunicado for a couple of days. Very restful. And cheap.
See…I traveled a lot and enjoyed it. I love Yellowstone and those kinds of places but there isn’t much like it around here. But the kids don’t care one way or the other. We’ll be taking our nets down to the lake quite a bit…if we get our bikes fixed we could almost ride down. But the baby isn’t quite big enough for the bike carrier yet.
My situation is a bit more unusual. Gas currently is about 15% of our budget - we live about 20 miles from anything. But I plan to increase our activities this coming school year, because my children have been stuck at home with very limited outings for the last 3 years. In 2005, my husband was out of work and I was pregnant with twins. In 2006, I had newborn twins - ’nuff said! In 2007, I began teaching every day part-time at a charter school, not realizing that this meant basically no activities for my dc. The only way I would change my plans and stay home more would be if there was absolutely no way we could possibly afford to drive anywhere. We are all tired of being home all the time.