You don't have to be rich...

.. to home-educate well, and before this turns into a distasteful paraphrase of Prince's Kiss, I'll go on to list the reasons why it can be, in fact, better for your educational provision when you're in the fashionable state of 'relative poverty':

Sourcing free and/or affordable equipment becomes part of the learning process - involving creative exploring of charity shops, scraps stores, recycling, Freecycling, ebay and mutual support networks.

Absence of off-the-peg learning schemes and materials leads to development of creative learning systems - like our squishy letters, for example.

Valuable new skills are developed out of necessity - most of us here now know how to build a PC, for example, and we had to create our own Internet network system, in the days before Microsoft did it for you. We've learned how to fix our own washing machine, and lots of other practical skills.

Tight financial planning hones the arithmetic ability - when every purchase requires a complex balance sheet adjustment, maths and finaces quickly become second nature for all involved.

Better, more creative use is made of existing possessions and space - when there is no ready supply of cash to fund replacements, different ideas need to be employed - we often alter and adapt articles of clothing, for example, which requires imagination and certain skills.

In the present ineffective 'throw money at every problem' climate, I think it's especially vital to develop and demonstrate this alternative approach.