How to a Find Home School Curriculum Inexpensively

The biggest expense of homeschooling is curriculum. Every year we are faced with the same question: How are we going to budget for next year’s curriculum? Homeschooling doesn’t have to be expensive. Over the years I have found many places on the web where you can get affordable curriculum. If you can get your curriculum used instead of new, you will save quite a bit of money, and if you can sell your curriculum from the previous year, you will save even more because you can use the money from your sales to offset the cost of the curriculum you need.

Here is what I do when looking to sell last year’s books and purchase next year’s books:

Once I look through home education catalogs and decide what curriculum I want to use in each subject, I go through my old curriculum from the previous year looking for items that I can sell. I make a list of the items that I think other people may be able to use with the prices listed. I usually ask for half of what the new price is. Then I start searching the web for places to sell my used curriculum and purchase the curriculum I need for next year at the best possible price.

My first stop is the library. Many times, I can find what I am looking for in the library system and even request what I need via inter-library loan. Then I get my curriculum for free!

For the rest of the items, I first go to half.com. At the home page, I click on “sell your stuff”, and I list all my items for sale. It costs me nothing to list my items, and it is easy to list them by the ISBN numbers. Once I list my items for sale, I search for the curriculum I need for next year and jot down the going prices.

My next stop is ebay.com. I do not list my items on eBay because of the listing fees, but it sure is a great place to buy used curriculum. I type what I am looking for in the search box and see if what I need is up for auction. I sort the results by price: lowest first and note the going prices and the ending dates of the auctions.

Next I go to vegsource.com On the right side, I see the swap boards. I post my items for sale on the appropriate boards. I also check the wanted boards to see if anyone is looking for something that I have. Then I check the Items For Sale boards to see if what I am looking for is currently posted for sale. Lastly, I post my Wanted to Buy list on the Wanted board.