Parents have a love-hate relationship with back to school. Our mentals welcome the reprieve of having to keep the kids perpetually entertained but the dent in our wallets for clothes and school supplies hits like a grenade.
According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), a study they conducted in collaboration with Prosper Insights & Analytics found that “Families with students in elementary through high school plan to spend an average of $858.07 on clothing, shoes, school supplies and electronics…driving expected total spending to $39.4 billion, up from $38.8 billion last year.” Meanwhile, “College students and their families are planning to spend an average of $1,325.85…bringing expected total back-to-college spending to $88.8 billion, up from $86.6 billion last year.”
These costs are not what every family spends on back-to-school shopping, as each family has a different cost of living and level of financial freedom to buy brand new clothes, textbooks, stationery or appliances for the new school year. For many families, spending between nine and thirteen hundred on school each summer is out of budget. But your kids still need the supplies and new clothes, so how can the shopping be made affordable?
Here are some ways to soften the assault on your finances:
1. Go to secondhand/vintage stores for new clothes.
Thrifting and shopping secondhand has become a popular way to get new clothes that aren’t new at all, and today’s youth is all in (at least, the older side of today’s youth; think eighth grade and up). It’s a wallet-friendly and guilt-free way to upgrade their wardrobe and accessories, and most of these kids will proudly say that they got their cool new clothes from a vintage or consignment shop. It’s also be a great way to support local businesses and help limit how much waste and pollution is being built up from fast-fashion shopping online. Thrifted clothes can withstand the test of time and endure wear-and-tear, meaning they’ll stay in your kids’ wardrobe rotation for longer than a month.
2. Rent or buy used textbooks.
When sending kids to college, one of the larger dents to a parent’s wallets can be textbook costs when one or more are required for each course, which easily averages out to be around $1,250, depending on what major or field of studying they choose to pursue. Buying or renting directly from the school’s bookstore can be extremely costly. Instead, look into alternatives like BookFinder.com, Chegg, Amazon, SlugBooks, and more. Waiting until your kid actually hears the teacher or professor say which ones are really needed on the first day of class will also help weed out the recommended-but-not-necessary ones.
3. When it comes to tech, see what the school has to offer.
Schools are utilizing technology more each year, which means students will need access to their own individual computer, calculator, or more both at home and in school. But not every family has the means to provide their kids their own individual laptops or color graphing calculator. Fortunately, many schools are now providing their students with their own chromebooks, and have a vast supply of graphing calculators to sign out, meaning parents don’t need to spend between $75 and $140 for their kids to do higher difficulty math at home, like statistics and calculus. Why buy a brand new TI-84 when the schools provide a perfectly-fine working version?
4. Instead of five or six brand new single subject notebooks, reuse or get a big five-subject one.
It’s easy to look at a list of materials that are recommended and feel like your kid needs to have materials and stationery specific to each class. Sometimes, one big five-subject is all they need, depending on the difficulty of their classload. They may even be able to reuse the notebooks from the previous yearl. Reusing is also a great way to keep subjects together, as your kids will be able to go back and reference what they learned previously.