Money and Budget Management

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Short Answer

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

• Warren Buffet
  • It’s an attribution, so unsure on exact source.

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Money affords mistakes. The kind of mistakes that’d make even a loan shark give you money advice, like slowing down on gambling.

If the service(s) sounds too good to be true and/or or does not cost money, find out how the service(s) make money to cover expenses. It’ll likely answer many questions about their motives and biases, or even reveal it’s a scam. Remember, the goal of a business (and financial operations) is making money, not saving money.

If you’re deciding between two or more options to spend money on, the following factors should be examined for tie-breakers:

• Users (who it works for)
• Scale (can it handle larger workloads in the future)
• Performance (how well does it work and handle failure/delays)
• Cost (is it affordable in the short/long term)

The typical goal of an organization is to improve performance (effectiveness) and/or cut costs (efficiency). Money is a large motivator behind decision making.

If selling products or services, it’s typically better to offer incentives towards customers to buy something rather than force customers to buy something.

One of the biggest risks to your own wealth is you. I often joke about hiring an attorney if I won the lottery or got a large inheritance because of this, but it’s risk management.

If you’re trying to teach a student about wealth, go over the following:

• How to be humble and gracious.
• How not to be an asshole.
• Instilling self-awareness about their own wealth and privilege/opportunities they’re given due to it.
  • If they grew up wealthy, they need to face that fact and admit it.
  • They also cannot admit it with shame or defensiveness; they have to acknowledge it and the responsibility with it.

Long Answer

Here’s a joke: I only had a small amount of money at the time. I ask for some funds to afford a small breakfast from a millionaire friend of mine so I don’t go hungry. Later that day, they’re asking me for three dollars to cover it. I replied: “Here’s ten dollars; keep the change.”

In this chapter, we explore topics that “price insensitive” and “economically insensitive” people pretend to ignore, but still very much care about. If you know someone who describes themselves with those terms, ask them for money and see if they’re actually insensitive or just won’t admit they are sensitive still.

While I did talk about monetary blockers briefly before, I’m creating a separate section because money permeates every facet of teaching, either directly or indirectly. How much you’re paid is also affected by money available for budgets. When able, you want to find out, or at least think about, who controls the budget because time can kill deals and opportunities.

Money is what buys you time and happiness, up to a certain point, but also affords comforts. The amount of wealth and resources a student has available typically correlates positively with their quality of education (Diemer et al., 2019).

Because money affords comfort and (many) resources, having too much money risks incompetence, laziness, and excess wasting of those same resources. Having enough money and resources solves a lot of problems and provides a lot of freedom, such as eliminating the constant anxiety you could lose everything the next day and ability to do social things that cost money.

• Some subtle indications of having enough resources is you might forget when pay day is, aren’t concerned about late deposits, or don’t worry about which bills to pay.
• It also generates a lot of new problems.
  • Instead of not dealing with issues due to lack of resources, people may throw money at issues to try and make them go away.
  • E.g. Time management: Many people plan in hours, but millionaires plan every minute and billionaires plan every second to maximize value.
  • More aptly put: making decisions based on convenience rather than monetary cost.

If teachers are managers, then each class you’re teaching is like a project you’re overseeing.

• Students are employees doing the tasks by learning and showing proof they learned properly.
• You have an assigned budget for supplies, equipment, and materials–mainly provided by the school, PTO/PTA, or investments.
• You’re organizing the workload distribution and backlog (units and topics in your subjects taught) through a set period with strict deadlines.
• You have to make sure students are doing the work and not causing excessive issues amongst each other. There is behavior management involved.

Teachers function like managers, even if it’s not outwardly stated. Another role you have is managing money. If you don’t have money or spend it all unwisely, you may not have the supplies to teach. Unlike typical managers, though, you may not deal with all the nuances of budgets and money; that may be up to the principal(s) at your institution.

Wealth Dynamics (for Education)

Notice: Much of this section comes from personal observations.

How much wealth a school has, or the students and parents attending a school has, affects their behaviors as well. The probability for a better education at a high-wealth school is higher than a low-wealth school. It does not necessarily mean a good education at a low-wealth school is impossible to earn or an excellent education is guaranteed at a high-wealth school. It could still mean, however, a degree and education received at a low-wealth school does not compare to a high-wealth school.

• Put another way: a student could be a big fish in a little pond with, or without, even knowing about it.

Despite this optimism, socioeconomic status (SES) of a child and their parents is statistically significant as a prediction of mobility and success in said child’s future (CEW Georgetown, 2019).

• For a visual representation, consider looking at the Opportunity Atlas from Opportunity Insights (Opportunity Insights, 2024).

Understand that teaching is difficult no matter the type of school and how much funding it has. Problems don’t disappear; they change. While I do have mixed opinions on it, I believe higher wealth may have students exhibit more open defiance and entitlement while lower wealth may have more chaos and immature behaviors.

Teachers still teach based on the abilities and motivations of students with available resources. Additionally, at every level of school, you may still face bad parents, staff, students, etc.

• I’m mainly focusing on what may occur from X amount of wealth.
• Some readers may correlate problems with wealth listed here to levels in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (McLeod, 2025).

Generally speaking, as a school goes from lower wealth to higher wealth, the following may occur (this is a lot of things!):

• The amount teachers pay out-of-pocket decreases
• More opportunities available for students
• Physiological and psychological needs are better met
• Career-readiness and aspirations met increases
• Less time spent managing and more time spent instructing
• Staff to student ratios are more balanced
• Lower probability of bad behaviors and extreme behaviors amongst students
• Budget increases, permitting better equipment for the school
• Educational rigor increases
• Expectations of students increases
• Communication amongst all relevant parties (parents, teachers, etc.) is more prominent
• More qualified teaching staff are available
• More specialists to cater to different needs or teach certain topics are available
• Achievements and performance of students increases
• Teacher autonomy over grades and instruction increases
• Motivation of students increases
• Rate of identified accommodations increases

Lower income schools deal more with behavioral issues than instructional issues, whereas higher income schools deal more with instructional issues over behavioral issues. Every level still deals with motivational issues. More instruction and higher quality education is available when income increases as it provides more resources to address various issues.

While those are benefits, there’s also problems occurring as wealth goes from low to high. To give some examples:

1. Wealth inequality is, ironically, higher at high-income schools compared to low-income schools.
   • You could have a low-income and high-income student both at the same school, but the average is “high” so it’s considered an affluent school still.
   • It’s simple math: there’s a higher range difference between 100,000 and 1,000,000 versus 10,000 and 100,000. It’s a difference in one or more orders of magnitude.
   • Metrics like Gini Coefficient showcase inequality in general across populations, but those formulae aren’t needed to showcase an example here (Hood, 2025).
2. Purchasing educational achievement instead of earning educational achievement.
   • This provides access to resources typically reserved for the privileged, such as private tutors, test preparations, extracurriculars, admission boosts, and more.
   • It also means money can bypass effort and learning to achieve a desired goal, like grades or credentials.
3. Affluence may cause mental issues such anxiety, depression, isolation, and more (Egbe & Smith, 2025).
   • Do note higher affluence may lead to more self-reporting, which can skew data.
4. Administration may more easily acquiesce towards higher income parents and students.
   • E.g. if your budget is 10 million, and one donor (parent, group, etc.) provides 1 million (~10% of total funding), you’re more likely to bend the rules for them compared to another person who isn’t a significant source of funding.
   • More accommodations for students may be provided than necessary to a student’s detriment, such as enabling learned helplessness.
   • Teachers may be forced to give a student a grade they did not earn.
   • Consequences for actions, which normally are enforced, may not be readily enforced to appease an external figure.
5. Parents, and students, may view school staff as beneath them without warrant.
   • E.g. a student may not listen to and mock a teacher because their parents make 5-10 times more than the teacher.
   • Your opinions may not be considered valid until they hear it from another person of similar status to them.
   • Entitlement is typically, but not always, higher; there’s more money invested from parents and other parties into a student’s education, so the expected ROI (return on investment) is higher in turn and under heavier scrutiny.
   • A large amount of sudden wealth, or inherited wealth, in student hands may readily invite risky behaviors.
   • What might be only a complaint from lower-income people may be an immediate lawsuit from higher-income people simply because they have the resources to go straight to litigation.
6. You care less about a particular resource when you have more of it and can get more of it.
   • Let’s say you have 100,000 USD and get a 3 dollar sandwich at a 0.003% cost to total net worth.
   • A millionaire (1,000,000 USD) can get 10 sandwiches (30 dollars) at the same relative cost.
     • What is 0.003% cost for the millionaire is 0.03% cost for the first person
   • A billionaire (1,000,000,000 USD) can get 10,000 sandwiches (30,000 dollars) for the same relative cost.
     • What is a 0.003% cost for the billionaire is a 30% cost for the first person
   • Wealth scales linearly, but the relative cost of goods and services don’t scale as well. This creates a cognitive dissonance and cultural divide in lifestyle on what someone considers “normal.” Shown with only math, the millionaire is closer to the 100,000 USD person than the billionaire.

To end this section: while wealth is an indicator, it does not always paint the whole story. Staff, students, parents, organizations, and general environment from one school to another school, even across schools with the same socioeconomic background, can have a night and day difference in how teachers are treated, education is provided, and discipline is enforced.

Are Private or Public Schools Better?

There’s a lot of factors in play, but I’ll generalize it this way: the types of students present, the resources available, and how the resources are used affect the outcomes of student education far more than a school designation.

• I’m also lumping charter schools under the public school umbrella here.

The biggest advantage I’ve seen with private schools is they can select their students and more easily remove students.

Assuming one public school teacher and one private school teacher enroll the same types of students (including their distributions on performance, behaviors, etc.), get the same curriculum and standards, and receive the same resources, I’d imagine they perform equally well. The major variable left to “control” is the teacher in charge of each classroom, which even that could be the same across both testing groups.

Outside of that, public and private schools each have their advantages and their own numerous problems attached with them. Wealth (and resources), like the last section mentioned earlier, likely affects school performance far more than whether a school is private or public.

Even if public schools and private schools perform similarly in controlled environments, there’s plenty of differences in environments and programs that may swing your decision one way or another in practice. As an example: though both schools achieve the same educational results, you may prefer method Y for teaching over method Z. There may be other factors outside your control and/or outside the school’s control as well, such as city/county rezoning developments.

Both private schools and public schools can perform well. The focus should be more on the environments these schools have and whether or not the school has specific resources to suit your educational needs.

Where’s the Money?

Money for schools typically comes from three public funding sources:

• Local government
• State government
• Federal government

Private schools can access public funds, but it’s limited through options like waivers, vouchers, scholarships, and tax benefits. Many also operate as nonprofits (i.e. a 501(c)(3)) too, though some private schools may be for-profit.

Public schools receive public funding. Across the states in general, about 40-50% of funds come from the local government, 40-50% come from the state government, and the remainder (10-20%) is from the federal government, based on my extrapolation from research (Cornman et al., 2024).

• For the U.S., The Institute of Education Sciences (i.e. NCES) also provides a way to look up public school funding online at the district level (2019).

Charter schools also receive funding like public schools. In the case of Colorado, they receive “Per Pupil Revenues” (PPR) or money given by the state for expenses and insurance (Colorado Department of Education, 2025).

Each of these funding sources is significant and use various formulae and metrics to determine which school districts receive necessary funding. If even one of these sources are affected, that could hamstring the entire educational system unless other resources compensate for the funding loss.

To illustrate how losing a single source of funding affects the educational system, I’ll describe a situation in the United States. As occurred on October 2025, “nearly 90% of the Education Department is furloughed” including “nearly everyone in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services” (OSERS) due to effects from the ongoing government shutdown at the time (Schermele, 2025). This halted many administrative functions and the ability to distribute funding and enforce compliance is hampered due to lower personnel counts. By affecting head count, federal money for education is unlikely to get distributed as intended, done in a timely fashion, meet compliance, or get regulated as effectively.

Since the federal level is effectively shutdown, the next organizational tier, the state, absorbs the impact now (~10% funding allocation). The state may have to eat up costs to maintain any existing federal programs if that funding was cut. If there were any programs entirely, or primarily, reliant on federal funding, they may have to pause or be shut down too.

The irony is shutting down a federal education department does not exempt following federal education laws. Statutes like IDEA and FAPE still expect compliance, even with diminished oversight or limited resources available to properly enforce them. Because there’s a lack of resources, the expected output and anyone benefiting from these systems are likely to suffer.

• This also includes complying with IEPs and related plans.

To put this into perspective for many readers, it’s like being told to complete a project with only a fraction of your original team and without many necessary tools. You’re still expected to complete everything in the project scope by the deadline, but your ability to do so is crippled.

The Learning Budget

Your “budget” allotted to you as a teacher comes in different names, such as allowance, learning budget, classroom budget, and more. For consistency’s sake, I’ll refer to it as “learning budget” going forward.

Unless you’re teaching outside of a normal educational institution, your spending limit is typically defined by someone else, like your principal, and not you. Items covered by that learning budget are also not always up to you; instead, this may be defined by principals, districts, states, organizations providing funds, U.S. Department of Education, and the IRS (Internal Revenue Service, 2025b)(U.S. Department of Education, 2025).

• Even if you’re not subject to principal control, you may be subject to IRS control. If you’re part of a non-profit, you also have stricter requirements on what can and cannot be paid for in general (Internal Revenue Service, 2025a, 2025d).

In educational systems, just about every single dollar is allocated for a specific purpose. Learning budgets provided for teachers are about 200 USD, but those same teachers could also spend 800+ USD out-of-pocket for other classroom supplies too (Tarawally, 2025). Money may also come from a parent-teacher association (PTA) or a parent-teacher organization (PTO) that provides grants and approves purchases and materials teachers buy. From personal experience, as long as you’re getting only supplies they’ll cover–or able to get them to cover–you hopefully won’t be in a bad spot.

Suppose you’re still low on budgetary needs PTA and PTO cannot cover. In that case, you may also look into third-party organizations, fundraisers, charity events, donation drives, and more. I won’t discuss those in-depth because of their varied nature.

Outside of groups like PTA and PTO, state and federal budgets (taxpayer dollars and aid programs included) also affect your learning budget and, by extension, your school budget. A school or institution may also provide digital assets, or convertible virtual currency, such as online currency valid to use only on certain websites (Internal Revenue Service, 2025c, 2025e).

Typically, where a teacher puts the learning budget and funds into are some of the following. There are significantly more examples, but these come to mind first:

• Essentials, like paper, pens, lab equipment (for science), and office supplies
• Teaching aids, like books, online materials, software, and multimedia equipment
• Extras, like classroom decorations and furniture

As long as you don’t carelessly spend money and realize the budget needs to last for the entire teaching period, you should be OK. Generally speaking, when buying things, you want to look for the following:

• Any deals or significant savings
• Items that you don’t immediately need, you can get in a timely fashion
• Items you can plan out in advance to purchase
• Items not easily obtainable without purchasing them
• Things that are safe (or safe enough for science) in a teaching environment

Practical Application of a Budget

If you’re not sure how much you should spend, forget about whatever learning budget you have and pretend you have only 100 USD (United States dollars). It’s probable you can have at least the essentials and basic supplies you need for a classroom with that much money.

Remember: this is a 100 USD spending limit. You could get items for free if that’s an option!

• The only exception to this 100 USD limit right now is for any ONE item that is >=100 USD.
• Keep in mind any items you buy can also be just for you, the teacher, and not for student use.
• If the school/facility provides something you need in general, you could get away with not buying your version and save money.
  • E.g., don’t get a laminator machine or a printer if your facility already has a working one.
• You also don’t need to spend all 100 USD. If you get everything you need with less money spent, that’s fine and saves you more money.

If you can use credit cards responsibly, I’d say do so over a debit card. Protections and benefits are generally worth it (Further reading example from Michigan’s Consumer Protection Team).

Once the 100 USD is spent, stop and ask yourself: do I still lack any essentials? If there’s still funds available, then use those funds to get the essentials.

Set aside some money to replenish essential goods throughout the year. Then, you can use the rest of your budget for other items and goods you may need, as well as lower-priority items.

• I’d set aside up to 50% of my budget, if you asked me, as “emergency” funds.

If it’s near the end of the year and you need to reach net zero–where you spend up your entire budget on purpose–then you can tap more into your savings to purchase teaching and classroom supplies for both this teaching period and future teaching periods.

Your learning budget is supposed to last the entire teaching period, whether that is a year, semester, or otherwise. If you spend it all at once, then you’re in for a bad time. Remember to keep receipts and ensure items in your budget are reimbursed, so you don’t pay too much out-of-pocket. You could get your school, sponsors, and grants to get you funds if you can show it’s necessary for teaching and the funds are available.

Remember: Never pay out-of-pocket unless necessary, and don’t go above your allotted learning budget whenever possible. You don’t have to spend much money for a good teaching experience; only as much as you need.

What About NO Money At All?

Get used to being humble real quick then.

On a serious note, you’ll need to get savvy and creative in sourcing materials. Fortunately, there are countless ways, tools, and implementations available for free (or free for a useful amount of time). There’s no sense listing them all because I’d use up several books worth of text real estate to do so.

Instead, let’s go over some methods. Keep in mind you may need to provide an ID or verification to access some of these.

• Free Internet and Wifi. This may be available at public facilities, like a public library. Be aware, however, free Internet isn’t necessarily secure Internet, so don’t carelessly handle sensitive data.
• Free resources offered through physical and online services. Like mentioned earlier, think areas like Adopt a Classroom.
• For those with at least some money, some stores and merchants may offer discounts on items and purchases for applicable educational needs.
• For designing education, there are multiple tools online free by default or free for educators. This includes software like Google Docs and Canva.

Whether you’re an educator looking for ways to reduce financial burdens in teaching or someone inside education systems looking for low-cost solutions, there are many options.

All it takes is the ability to find them.

Bibliography

1. AdoptAClassroom.org. (n.d.). AdoptAClassroom.org. https://www.adoptaclassroom.org/

2. Born to Win, Schooled to Lose. (2019, May 15). CEW Georgetown. https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/schooled2lose/

3. Colorado Department of Education. (2025, July 14). Colorado Charter Schools Frequently Asked Questions. CDE. https://www.cde.state.co.us/cdechart/faq

4. Cornman, S.Q., Doyle, S., Moore, C., Phillips, J., and Nelson, M.R. (2024). Revenues and Expenditures for Public Elementary and Secondary Education: School Year 2021–22 (Fiscal Year 2022): First Look (NCES 2024-301). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2024/2024301.pdf

5. Diemer, M. A., Marchand, A. D., & Mistry, R. S. (2019). Charting How Wealth Shapes Educational Pathways from Childhood to Early Adulthood: A Developmental Process Model. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 49. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-019-01162-4

6. Egbe, D., & Smith, C. B. (2025, May 12). The Double-Edged Sword of Affluence. Psychiatric Times. https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/the-double-edged-sword-of-affluence

7. Hood, K. (2025). Measuring Income Inequality: A Primer on the Gini Coefficient. Bea.gov. https://apps.bea.gov/scb/issues/2025/08-august/0825-gini-primer.htm

8. The Institute of Educational Sciences. (2019). Public School District Finance Peer Search. Nces.ed.gov. https://nces.ed.gov/edfin/search/search_intro.asp

9. Internal Revenue Service. (2025a, January 30). Exemption requirements - 501(c)(3) organizations. https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/exemption-requirements-501c3-organizations

10. Internal Revenue Service. (2025b, February 19). Guide to business expense resources. https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/guide-to-business-expense-resources

11. Internal Revenue Service. (2025c, April 23). Frequently asked questions on virtual currency transactions. https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/frequently-asked-questions-on-virtual-currency-transactions

12. Internal Revenue Service. (2025d, June 5). Exempt organization types. https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/exempt-organization-types

13. Internal Revenue Service. (2025e, June 20). Digital assets. https://www.irs.gov/filing/digital-assets

14. Opportunity Insights. (2024). The Opportunity Atlas. Opportunityatlas.org. https://www.opportunityatlas.org/

15. Schermele, Z. (2025, October 11). Education Department wipes out special ed office in shutdown layoffs, union says. USA TODAY. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2025/10/11/education-department-special-ed-office-layoffs-shutdown/86646104007/

16. State of Michigan Consumer Protection Team. (2024). Credit Card v Debit Card - Know the Difference. Michigan.gov. https://www.michigan.gov/consumerprotection/protect-yourself/consumer-alerts/shopping/credit-card-v-debit-card-know-the-difference

17. Tarawally, M. (2025, June 9). 2025 Teacher Spending Survey. AdoptAClassroom.org. https://www.adoptaclassroom.org/2025/06/09/2025-teacher-survey-spending-stats-classroom-needs/

18. U.S. Department of Education. (2025, June 27). Budget process in the U.S. Department of Education. https://www.ed.gov/about/ed-overview/annual-performance-reports/budget-process-in-the-us-department-of-education

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