My training from career step (all online) cost $1800, but there are different options and routes to go. They are all described on the website with the costs all laid out. Personally, if I had it to do over again, I would have just gotten the gold option online. Plus you have the option of getting a sallie mae loan.

There are top 3 legit schools to attend (Companies hire new grads from these schools as well):

Career Step -- Cheapest, learn at your own pace. Took 8 months for me.
M-Tec
Andrews

All three of these schools have excellent reputations.

Thats more money than I have.

Barbie, a lot of the time these schools have payment plans, so you don't have to pay all at once.

as for me, I'm a stay-at-home-mom now. I used to do editing from home, as a contractor for my old company, but that got phased out after September 11 (so, yeah, a while back). I thought I'd get hardly any work done doing that job, being at home and with so many distractions and temptations, but the truth is that I actually got more done, because I didn't have the commute, the lunches, the long meetings where I had to look attentive (they can't see you on speakerphone! but be sure you have your end on mute!), or all the water-cooler chitchat.

I am a SAHM so i 'work at home' that way, and then i also teach part-time (5 hours a week) to bring in a little extra $$ to meet our budget.

I work from home. Mostly I do eBay for income. This requires a little out of home work for buying what I'm selling...but it brings in enough money to pay the bills. Hubby sells at fleamarkets and I go do that with him too. But we can take the kids...so this is another plus.

I also build webpages for a VERY VERY cheap rate. I sell webpages for a very well known hosting company and sometimes, depending on the demeaner of the customer, I won't charge them for actually building the page if they agree to host with the company. I just let the affiliate pay cover the cost of building.