For Stay at Home Moms, Online College Courses Are a Path to Success

For a vast majority of stay at home mothers (or fathers) who are in the lower income bracket, finding a job is something that cannot be done. The prices of daycare are high, gas prices are soaring, and for many mothers the cost of having a starting wage job outweighs the alternative of staying home. In fact most mothers I know prefer to stay at home with their children anyway, so this is where the benefits of online college are paving the way to higher paying careers for stay at home mothers.

For a very long time I have been a stay at home mother, eight years to be exact. Many of these years I have wondered what I will do with my life when the kids are all in school and I actually have an opportunity to work. Throughout the past years of financial struggles I have tried just about every home based business and none of those made me rich like they promised. I tried working as a cashier on an opposite shift from my husband. I don't recommend the opposite shift thing because that was a disaster, I was always exhausted from staying up till three in the morning then getting up with three children at six. Another thing that I attempted was doing some house cleaning on my own and this didn't work out due to the fact that I still had to pay daycare costs.

As you probably already know a lot of stay at home mothers feel stuck. Most colleges now offer a large variety of online courses that enable you to take your classes from home. Granted some of them require the tests to be taken at a proctored test site, but that is only a couple hours compared to traveling back and forth to classes. This opportunity offers us stay at home moms a chance to have a career of our choice when we finally enter the work world.

I will be starting my second year of college this fall and I am extremely proud of myself for accomplishing the first year. Yes, it was tough to make the time around my already busy schedule to study, but knowing that I am that much closer to my journalism degree is all I need to keep going.

I bet you have questions, like how much will it cost. Most people of a lower income will be eligible for financial aid. The first step to receiving financial aid is going to be filling out your FASFA which stands for free application for federal aid. You need to fill out the FASFA early, several months before you want to start school. The FASFA can be found online at www.fasfa.ed.gov you will need to have your income tax forms with you as well as your social security number, your driver's license, bank statements, and investment records. Don't worry its not as hard as it sounds, the FASFA is very easy to fill out.

You will need to know what school you want to go to and your FASFA information will be sent there as well as to you. The school will notify you when they have processed the FASFA and send you an award letter announcing how much financial aid you will receive. The amount will depend upon many factors (income, half time or full time school) and is hard to estimate what you will receive. However, many people that I know who make less than two thousand dollars a month and have children have enough to pay for their classes, books, and a little bit left over.

If you haven't already you will need to register as a student with the college, many times there will be a fee for this. For me, at my college this fee was only twenty five dollars. Different schools may be different fees. Then you will need to sign up for classes, the earlier you do this before the start of semester the better of you will be at getting a class you want. Your classes will depend upon what you choose to major in, however I am only taking core classes to begin with just in case I want to change my major.

So after you do all of these steps you will be pretty much ready except for your books. At many colleges the bookstore will allow you to charge against your financial aid before you actually receive it. I had to have my award letter and my class schedule with me. (You can get this online at your college's website) Once you get your books, you should be good to go. I must put in here that I drug my three children with me through the whole process of going to the school and registering, getting my books, and getting my student ID. (A student ID is usually a good thing to have.)

So stay at home moms, we are not stuck. There is a career out there waiting for us and we just need to know that we can start pursuing it from the comfort of our own home. Once the hard part of filling out forms and registering is over, all you need is a computer and some time to study for your classes. Truly, the hardest part is the very beginning.