Many people make raising kids much more laborious / costly than it has to be.
> A family of four in the United States already needs roughly $87,000 to $100,000 just to meet a basic living wage depending on the state.
Yes, housing is expensive, largely due to zoning laws and building codes that make building inexpensive housing legally impossible. But much of that cost can be mitigated by moving to less desirable parts of the country.
Check out the wild, beautiful, inexpensive housing that could be built if authoritarian busybodies didn't suppress housing:
https://lloydkahn.com
> Now factor in the economic reality that homeschooling requires labor.
Unschooling doesn't require that much labor. And unschooled students do fine:
https://gemini.google.com/share/010658d83bdd
And more recently, AI's can provide personalized, 1 on 1, PhD level tutoring on any topic for $20/month.
> Sports, 4H, clubs, music lessons, martial arts, robotics, homeschool co-ops.
Where is it written that kids must join club sports? I rode my bike around town, climbed trees, and dug holes. 3rd world kids seem to do fine with a soccer ball and an empty field.
The Teenage Liberation Handbook suggests many other inexpensive alternatives:
https://amazon.com/Teenage-Liberation-Handbook-School-Education/dp/0962959170
> Curriculum packages, lab equipment for science, books, museum memberships, printing supplies, online courses, and homeschool co-op tuitio
Junk equipment is basically for free. Kids can learn a lot simply by taking apart an old lawn mower. As they get older, they can build go carts out of junk, or repair and sell broken tools.
And you can do a lot more with kitchen chemicals and mason jars than kids are allowed to do in schools. The same is true for almost any other topic.
Many a chemist/chemical engineer got into the field by making rockets / fireworks as kids.
https://fireworking.com
> Then there are the educational costs.
Education programs for any topic at all levels are available for free on youtube.
See "Low buck garage" or "Jeremy Fieldings" channels on youtube.
Fielding's viewers put together a huge list of science and engineering channels:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14qLQUjXRewAQincisRq3hZ1kguc1YoU7r4eJzO9_f84/edit?usp=sharing
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14qLQUjXRewAQincisRq3hZ1kguc1YoU7r4eJzO9_f84/edit?usp=sharing