What happens when your laptop dies at 9:00 AM and you have an important zoom call in 30 minutes, or you drive out your neighborhood for an exciting road trip and your car dies. It's the alternator and you've gotta get it fixed right away because it's your only means of transportation. If these scenarios make your stomach drop, this episode is for you. Today we're talking about the one financial tool that keeps homeschool work from home families from completely unraveling when life does what Life does best throws curve balls at the worst possible moment.

A fast growing number of parents are starting their homeschooling journey while others have been homeschooling for years. All of these parents are asking one big question, how can I afford to homeschool? We are here to answer that important question once and for all. Hi, I'm Crystal Obby. And I'm Anthony Obby. We've been homeschooling our five kids for 13 years and we funded it. Through our online consulting business that we've been running for over 17 years now, we're combining Crystal's financial coaching expertise with my digital marketing background where I help entrepreneurs launch and sell online. We're here to help fellow homeschooling parents self-fund their homeschool journey and create lifestyle businesses. For financial freedom without a nine to five job, are you ready to start living life on your own terms and make your homeschooling experience a lot more fun? Well then sit back, crank up the volume, and enjoy this episode of Homeschool Money.

Hey, what's up guys? Welcome to the show. I am your host, Anthony Obie. I'm Crystal Obie. Okay, so let's start with the basics. An emergency fund is simply cash. You keep separate from your regular spending money, usually in a savings account. You don't touch unless something genuinely goes wrong. Think of it as a buffer between you and disaster. Here's what it is. It's money for unexpected expenses like broken equipment, sudden medical bills, job loss, or an urgent educational need. It's your financial shock absorber. Now, here's what it's not. It's not for vacations Christmas presents or that curriculum sale you've been eyeing. It's not an investment account trying to grow wealth. It's just boring money that sits there waiting to rescue you. And how much should you have? Start with a thousand dollars if you're just beginning, that covers most small emergencies. Your ultimate goal, three to six months of essential expenses. So if your income disappeared tomorrow, you could keep the lights on, feed your family, and maintain your homeschool for several months while you figure things out. For homeschool families who work from home, I actually lean towards six months because remember, you're protecting both your school and your income source. Now let's talk about why this matters so much for families like ours. Here are 10 emergency fund reasons tailored specifically for homeschool families who work from home. Number one, curriculum pivot fund. When a curriculum completely bombs mid-year, and that does happen, you need money to switch without guilt. That 500 to $800 pivot keeps your homeschool year on track without derailing your grocery budget. This is such a common. Occurrence that happens with homeschool families. You, you start the year off and you've got this great curriculum, you're all excited. That's like literally one of the funnest things to do is when it's the back to school time and you're like, okay, what am I gonna do for math? What am I gonna do for science? What am I gonna do for this? And you buy all this great stuff and you get all set up and you got all the back to school or like how we do the not back to school. And then you got it all set up, get it going. And then the kid doesn't like it, or they just really can't understand it because kids have different learning needs and one curriculum could work really great for your firstborn, but then your second kid comes along and they just can't understand it. And one of the benefits of homeschooling is that you have the ability. To change in the middle of the year. You don't have to run that kid through that curriculum and just make 'em push hard through it. You can change and do something different, but the problem is, is you've already spent all that money. Yeah. And you're like, oh man, my kid's not learning. But I spent all that money and we're already on a budget. So I can't justify doing something different. Well, if you have a emergency fund for this type of thing, or if you just at least understand that this happens to every family, that you'll be okay realizing that you might need to make a change. And there are ways to get rid of curriculums that you are not using anymore. You can consign them, you can trade them, or you could save 'em for maybe the third kid, because sometimes it's just. Two of your kids may like it and two of your kids don't. There's lots of different ways to still get the value out of your money that you spent on curriculums, but you don't have to feel guilty because you're trying to do the best for your child. The most important thing to do is make sure that your child is. Actually learning from the curriculum. Otherwise, we're just making purchases of paper and computer, so softwares and things that are just useless. We wanna stay effective and make sure that it's really getting the result that we need. So that emergency fund lets you feel comfortable with doing that. That's good.

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Number two, the co-op collapsed safety net homeschool co-ops fold unexpectedly sometimes. Teachers move facilities close drama erupts. You need funds to quickly replace those science labs, art classes or PE programs your kids have come to depend on. This happens every year. You sign up for a program, you think you've got your whole semester lined up. You're like, we're on Monday, we're gonna be here Tuesday, we're gonna be here Wednesday, we're gonna be here Thursday, we're gonna be here, and Friday we're gonna do this for fun. And then halfway through a teacher moves or a facility changes, or maybe you just aren't meshing well with the other families or just some kind of reason. That maybe you're not able to keep doing the same activity and now you need to replace it. So where you were going to one side of town doing something on a Tuesday, now you need to replace that with something else or maybe even do a different activity at home. But there's some kind of reason that you need to make a change and you need to be able to be prepared to do that because it may be the difference. Between your child having an activity where they can have friends or not have friends. And so you don't wanna be limited because you weren't prepared with your emergency fund. You wanna be able to say, Hey, if it doesn't work out here, 'cause we've done that, we've signed up for programs that we thought this looks amazing. This is where we're gonna be and this is where we're really gonna connect. And then we get there and one big thing it'll turn out that maybe. They're, we have, you know, we have some boys and it's like all girls, and they're like, you know, eight years old and we're like, well, we need some older boys, or it's all older boys and we need some younger girls. So it may not even be a negative thing. It just may be a thing about alignment in age or interest and things like that. Either way. You wanna be prepared to be able to make that change and just, and because we have this flexibility in homeschool, that's why you wanna be prepared. And so it can stay being a really great opportunity and not be a frustration. 'cause you don't want your kid to have to lose a whole year of. Social activities because, oh, we already paid for all this stuff and you, it doesn't exist anymore. We need to change. You want them to still be able to make all the friends that they have, and one thing we find is there's way more activities than you can even do or even pay for. There's lots of options, but there's no options if you can't pay for them. That's right. Number three, work from home equipment failures. So your laptop doesn't care that you have a client deadline and spelling tests to grade when your equipment dies, you can't wait for the next paycheck. You need it fixed or replaced immediately. To get income flowing again. Yeah. The, the equipment that you use in homeschooling is a lot of the same equipment that you use in your home business. You need desktop computers, you need laptops, or you need, you know, iPads or phones, things like that. All these different things that you need as well as printers. One thing that happened is when we changed our internet provider one time, it threw off our printer. Yeah. And it was like, oh no. We can't print anything. And so, right. That's not a big deal since we work digitally, like we don't have to have so much stuff printed, but the kids really wanna print out things that they're using for their projects. Yeah. And worksheets and things like that. And so it wasn't a problem for us in business that our printer was offline for a few days. It, it became a problem though, and the school, and that's why we really saw all this stuff is really connected. And we wanna be able to make sure that we can either hire a repairman or get a new piece of software that is good with what we're working with or just whatever we need to do. We need to be able to keep everything online, keep all systems running, and that is super important because you don't want to lose days in your curriculum because one reason is that. Whenever you're able to keep going at a good pace with your schooling, then when it comes time, there's a day that you need to take a day off. You've already gotten the work done, but if you start losing time because the kids couldn't work, then it means that later on you won't be able to take time off. So just by being prepared, you can save those sick days for the time when you actually need them. That's a really good point. So number four, the sick parent scenario. Unlike traditional school families, when you're sick, everything stops education and income. An emergency fund lets you hire, help order teaching subscriptions that run on autopilot or bring in a tutor for a week without financial panic. There's so many scenarios where a parent can be sick and that can knock everything offline as well. And one way that we've really experienced this is that we've been homeschooling a lot of the time where I've been pregnant. And so at different parts of the pregnancy. I mean, I remember times where I was doing things and I just could not stay awake. And it's like I literally am so tired. I feel like my bones need to go to sleep.

Hey, friend, quick break. If you're ready to fund your homeschool without relying on a nine to five job, you have to check this out. We're giving you instant access to. Our free class is called Get 30,000 a year to Fund Your Homeschool Without a nine to five job. In just 90 minutes, you'll learn how to create consistent income. Afford a world-class education for your kids and get the lifestyle freedom you deserve, that's gonna give you more time to invest into the people that matter the most, your children. This is the system that changed everything for us, and it's changed everything for hundreds of other families too. Go to homeschool money.com to register and watch the free class on demand and get our newsletter full of tips and support. Don't wait. Your freedom starts right now.

Yeah. And you just can't really describe how tired you are when you're pregnant at certain times and even after you've delivered the baby. It's like you can't even remember. It's like you need to read and just leave a note for yourself. Remember how tired you were during this, and so many of us moms try to do a whole lot of things and forget about that tiredness, and so if you're homeschooling, it can be very tempting to just not do anything because you're so tired. Also, whenever you have a new baby, I mean the new baby is gonna take up all of your attention and time, and so. You're not gonna have the energy and you're not gonna have just the, the bandwidth to be able to fully focus on being able to homeschool unless you're really pushing forward. And so those are predictable times, like, you know, if you're pregnant and you know, if you have a newborn, but if you have something like. The flu that goes through the house. Like what happened with us one time, it knocked off our whole year because we all just passed through a sickness one February. Yeah. And it was like, and since that's the time of the year where we also have a lot of birthdays, anniversaries, and things like that, we got behind on celebrations. Yeah. And curriculums and everything. And so we had to tap into every resource we could to get the kids back on track and just get our whole life back on track. And so being able to. You know, get a, get a computer software if you, if you lose online things. Educational tools. Or get some books, some books that you, the kids can work through and workbooks if you don't want them to be on the computer or a, a tutor or some kind of class. Like we've, we've outsourced so many things. We've gone to science classes, math classes, reading classes. You know, we've done a lot of different things to where that, to have extra support and not just us having to educate the children, but you need to be able to do that and not just be available for free resources. You need to have some money set aside to be able to do that. And there are gonna be times where. Maybe it's not even just being sick. It may be you're just overwhelmed and so mentally tired and you just need the support. Like I would just be completely overwhelmed if I had to focus on doing math. I'm so glad we have great resources for math. Yes, that's right. Number five, the unexpected educational assessments. Sometimes you may discover mid-year that your child needs dyslexia testing, or occupational therapy evaluations, or gifted assessments. These aren't covered by insurance, and they can run anywhere from 500 to $2,000 or more, but early intervention is important. Not only is it important because you need early intervention, but many times the intervention that you can get, they need you to have this evaluation or assessment to prove that your child needs the help. And that's what people don't think about. They think that just because their child needs some extra help, they can just go, Hey, I need help. Let me sign up and get this help. No, that's not how it works. Organizations in order to help you. Need to prove that you are eligible for the support that you're signing up for. And they do that through these assessments and evaluations. And then in order to get that designation, you have to go and pay an organization that will. Evaluate your child, give you the paperwork that you need in order to tap into the many resources that are available, and those resources that are available could literally be the difference between your child feeling confident about their education, confident about themselves, and confident about their future. You don't want to sleep on the resources that are available for a child that needs help. You really need to take the time, think about it, and realize that. You could be dealing with something one day and then something unlocks and you say, you know what? That has been the problem. And overnight, now you're on this path of evaluations, assessments, and months later you've got help. It's, it can happen very fast, but it will be. So slow if you're not able to go and get the help that you need. 'cause a lot of times when you're with your child, they may do something and you're just so used to them doing it that you don't realize it's something they need help with. And that could be in the way they learn, or the way they speak, or just the way they, they do different things. And once you get into an envi, an environment where they have an evaluation, you're like, oh, that's what it was. And now I can get some help. You want it to be, I found out about it and now I can get help. You don't want it to be I found out about it and I couldn't get help for two years because we didn't have the resources to do it or didn't know how to, to get it. That's right. We had that exact scenario happen with one of our children. You had a suspicion that something was going on with, with him, and it was because we had the, the, the money set aside. That you were able to go and get that you know, diagnosis you know, done and completely Yeah. The diagnosis as well as the solution. Yeah. And I was able to say, Hey, I want first available. That's right. And not, you know, Hey, let me get it together. I was able to say, okay, this is an issue. Let's get first available. And make it the most comfortable experience possible. Yeah. And it was a multi-thousand dollar Yeah. Thing that just came unexpectedly out of school at Christmas time. At Christmas time. You know, everything's at Christmas time. Right, right. But, but having an emergency fund, which is a part of our plan our financial, like a fundamental part of our financial management we had the funds available to be able to get that taken care of as soon as we realized. There was an issue and so this is crucial for your family and for your kids and everything. Number six, field trip opportunities that cannot wait. Last minute educational opportunities pop up. A homeschool group gets museum tickets. NASA announces a local event. A marine biology boat trip has openings. These once in a lifetime learning experiences. Require immediate payment. There have been multiple times where we've had fun activities come up that, where it sounds so amazing, but it's like, we gotta hurry up and buy these tickets because there's, there's limited opportunity. Yeah. And so we don't have time to look and plan and think, and him and haw. We have to go ahead and sign up for these tickets, and you can have your whole school year planned out and you know, Hey, we wanna do this activity, we want this membership, we want this, we want that. But whenever certain activities come up and you have to make a move, it's important to know that that's gonna happen. And then also to know that there's margin in your budget so that you can be able to take advantage of them and just having that emergency fund. Unless you be able to do that. That's right. Number seven, the home office or homeschool space emergency. So let's say your HVAC dies in the summertime and we're in Texas, so that's a lot of heat. Your roof leaks over the school room or the internet goes out for days. You are not just fixing a house problem, you are restoring your workplace and your classroom at the same time. This happens to all my friends and happens to us too. Because you gotta think about it. If you're something is not working in your home, it's not just about getting it fixed and your home functioning, the way that it really messes up your homeschool is that, hey, if you're using a certain room for homeschool and now it's flooded, not only do you lose that space, but you also lose the materials. We're in that space. Or let's say you're, you have a room and that air conditioning went out. How are you gonna teach kids in a room where everybody is sweating because it's a hundred degrees? It's just not even safe, especially if you have a baby. And so the limiting your space and limiting your resources of your materials and things, it can really just throw you off. And so you wanna fix those things immediately. If you were, if your kids were going to a school and it flooded or it was burning up hot, you would be throwing a fit if your kids had to try to learn in that environment. And so you can't always get everything fixed immediately. Because you do have to wait a few days for the repair guys to come and do the estimates and order the parts and all that thing. We've dealt with all that as well. But you do wanna get it done as soon as possible because ultimately we want to keep our learning environment up and running as well as our living environment. And whenever you're working from home, it's your living, your working, and your schooling environment. That's That's right. There's three facilities being ran in here. That's right. Somebody needs to get out here and fix stuff. We gotta have our stuff, right? Yeah. Let's go.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying the show. We'll get right back to the discussion, but I do want to talk high level with you real quick. You see, transforming your finances so you can self-fund your homeschooling journey without a nine to five job takes a roadmap, right? And you may be wondering, where do I even start? Start at step one. Our Homeschool Money Makeover program breaks it down into five practical steps that help any family achieve a financially abundant. Homeschooling lifestyle. Step one, install the abundance Operating system. Most people believe that they need two, nine to five jobs to make it in America the truth. With all the technology and the tools available today, there's never been an easier time to generate six figures. A year in income working just 15 to 20 hours a week than today. When you have a strong why for homeschooling and you know the real costs, you unlock the courage that you need to become a money magnet without a nine to five job. Step two, get crystal clear about what you're gonna do with your first $1,000 that you make outside of your day job. Write down specific homeschool needs that a thousand dollars can cover. Yes, this is a small amount, but if you can learn how to set a target of make your first thousand dollars outside of your nine to five job, that's going to set a fire in your belly and the determination that you need. To make the next a hundred thousand dollars. Step three, find all the money falling through the cracks in your budget with Crystal's. Three financial coaching certifications. Listen, she's gonna help you be able to streamline your budget and free up money without sacrificing your favorite things. You can't build a strong financial future with money falling through your pockets, right? So let's plug up the leaks. Step four. Discover new ways to make money and claim free money available for homeschooling families. We discuss grants scholarships, proven fundraising opportunities that Savvy Homeschoolers are using, and we show you how to use them too. Step five, launch or Scale your Moneymaking Success System to completely replace your nine to five job income. Whether it's a side hustle, a freelance work, or a new business, identify your single most viable opportunity and turn that into $3,000 in income. $5,000, $10,000 a month in income or whatever you need to feel financially abundant. Implementing these five streamlined steps will make you feel more financially empowered than ever before. You'll gain the momentum that you need by step number five when you're making more money. You're going to feel unstoppable financially. Through our marketing consulting business, we've helped literally hundreds of entrepreneurs build online selling machines. That's what we do in our business life and launches, and we share our million dollar automated selling system with you. Inside the Homeschool Money Makeover program. Inside the course, you're gonna get all the video lessons, worksheets, templates, and guides that you need to walk through all five of the steps to transform your finances. And right now, during our special introductory offer period, you'll get bonus gifts plus our lowest enrollment price ever. Making it easy to enroll and make your first thousand dollars back. Fast. Go to homeschool money.com to watch our free class, and then you're gonna get an inside look at the full Homeschool Money Makeover program. Don't wait. Go to homeschool money.com to start the free class and enroll into the full program today.

Number eight, portfolio testing deadline crisis. If your state requires annual assessments or portfolio reviews, you might suddenly need to hire an evaluator. Print extensive documentation, or pay for standardized testing. When free options fall through. Now here in Texas, we don't have to do all that, but there's many states that you do, and that's important because that can keep your right to homeschool actually active. If you don't stay on top of the requirements in your state, you could lose the opportunity to even homeschool your child. And you do not wanna start messing with that. Right? And then also, if you have your child getting ready for college, you're gonna have to be documenting things to make sure that they have what they need to be able to start dual credit. Or to apply for scholarships or to get enrollment into college, you have to stay on top of your paperwork. And so if they say, Hey, your kid could apply for this scholarship, and there's a lot of money out here, especially for homeschoolers now. You need to be able to prove the work that they've done, the learning that they've done, and be able to get that turned around quickly. Because you know how it is somebody, you're out and you're at the park, how we'll do, or you're out to dinner with another family and they're like, Hey, you should hear about this program, and how is it, it's always, but the deadline is in two weeks. Yeah. Or the deadline is in one month. It's never like, oh, the deadline is in like two years. You got plenty of time. It's always like, you better get on it quick. Well, of course most of the moms I know, they'll stay up late. They'll do whatever they need to do to get the paperwork done. But those registration fees, those filing fees, those evaluation fees, whatever it is, you need to have the money available so that that way your kid can take advantage of all the resources that are available to them. That's right. Number nine, the child's interest explosion fund. So let's say you're a 10-year-old. Suddenly discovers a passion for robotics or microscopic or coding. These interests are educational gold, but they require immediate investment in materials and classes while the motivation is high. Yeah. You know, the kids never have an explosion of interest and stuff that's just free and laying around in nature. Yeah. Like, oh, you know, I wanna make things outta leaves. Right. It's like, oh no, I wanna build everything outta Lego, you know? Right. Yeah. And I need like 4,000 more Lego. Yeah. Right. And so whatever your child is interested in, it comes with all this extra stuff. You gotta get, like if you just, your child plays the guitar, like one of our childrens do. They, you gotta have the guitar, you gotta have the picks, you gotta have the bag, you gotta have the stand, you gotta have the carrying case, you gotta have music. You gotta have, you gotta have classes. You gotta have classes. Isn't that You got the, the group classes. You gotta have the, the, the private lessons. That's right. All these things that come along and you think, oh, and now we're already looking at going from acoustic guitar to electric guitar, which means we're gonna have an amplifier and all this. And I've been inspired and I want my bass guitar now. Oh my God. Come on. Stop, stop it. We should say that too. That should be like, like number nine B. Yeah. 'cause your child gets inspired and then that inspires you. Right Now you wanna do more stuff too, right? The whole family wants to learn. So yeah. So basically whenever you're homeschooling Jackson five up in here. I know the, the more you learn and the more opportunities you have. Your children are so into learning, that all comes with materials that need to be bought. And so you wanna be able to say, Hey, you're interested in this and it actually turned into something that you wanna pursue more. Let's go ahead and be able to invest in it, and we can, because we have a little extra margin in our budget. Yeah, that's good. Finally, number 10, family emergency schooling flexibility. So when a family emergency requires travels, for instance, aging parents or a family crisis, you need funds to either bring school on the road and that includes your tablets, portable curriculum your audio books, or pause and hire catch up help. When you return, traditional schools have substitute teachers. You need substitute solutions too. Whenever you need to go out of town in order to care for a loved one or. Take advantage of an opportunity that may be in another state or just, you know, something like that. You have the flexibility to be able to say, Hey, we're gonna stop homeschooling right now and catch up when we get back. Or you could road school. Yeah, take it on the road. Yeah. Which is super fun. Unless you be able to stay longer, like when we go back home to my hometown. We're able to take, you know, ourselves on the road and be like, Hey, we're gonna actually integrate a lot of our learning into our travels. Mm-hmm. So we're not gonna do our regular thing. We just kind of say, Hey, this is what we're gonna learn here where we're going and not do the regular stuff. So with some proper planning, you can do that, but that also means now you gotta invest in some other materials for that trip. Mm-hmm. And so. Being able to have emergency flexibility is a huge way that you can make sure that your kids are learning and that your experience is very fruitful. And so, but that also that takes, you know, an investment and so you can, like you said, either pause and catch up on your regular work when you get back. Or you can turn the trip into a different learning experience, which is what we like to do. 'cause I'm like, I know I don't wanna take the same stuff on the road. Let's go and learn on the road. Mm-hmm. But that means we kind of have to create a micro curriculum within. That what we're already doing. And so that takes extra money and extra planning. And so if, if somebody was to call and say, Hey, we need to get outta town right now, there's an emergency. We would not be nervous and we would not be afraid of our children not being able to learn. We know that. We know how to handle it and we'd be able to pay for it. that's right, crystal. So these reasons speak to the unique vulnerability of having your education system, your childcare, and your income source all under one roof. And that's why that triple threat requires a robust financial cushion, and that's what we call the emergency fund.

If you like today's episode, make sure you tap the follow button so you never miss a thing, and if it help you share it with a friend or your homeschool group sharing is caring. Do you love free stuff? Like me? Sign up and watch our free games class called Get 30,000 a year to Find Your Homeschooling. With our nine to five job, when you sign up, you'll gain instant access to a class and you'll get our weekly newsletter. For tips and strategies to make your homeschooling journey affordable, go to homeschool money.com and register right now, ready to get your homeschool money. Head over to homeschool money.com to enroll in the full Homeschool Money Makeover course. You'll get the tools, templates, and step by step help to find your first $1,000 fast. And create 30,000 or much more every year. Each module of this program is designed to transform your finances and help you experience financial abundance, so you have the flexibility and lifestyle freedom to homeschool your children with a nine to five job and without sacrificing. And right now we have an amazing limited time offer that gives you huge savings and bonus gifts you're going to love. Go to homeschool may.com to enroll today, and don't forget to give us some love with the five star rating and review. It'll help more people find ourselves. Have a great day. Bye.