-Ashley Baker
It’s mid-September and parents are happy to finally have the school year underway. Now that school has already begun many people are settled into their daily routines, which gives parents more of an opportunity to handle their own work or leisure time while the children are back at school. However, even though the school year is fully in effect, it is almost guaranteed that the spending for the school year is not.
According to a study done by the National Retail Federation (NRF) in July, it was expected that $83.8 billion was going to be spent on back to school between grades K-12 and college. When broken down the NRF figured that each “average family” with children in grades K-12 will spend about $688.62 for back to school, including school supplies, clothes, and accessories.
Even though many people get the bulk of their back-to-school spending, it doesn’t really end when the school year starts. Students are always going to need more pens, pencils, printer paper, and even different clothes as the seasons change and progress. The NRF says it best on their website. They state “Pencils break, backpacks rip, children grow…” (NRF 2012). This is even truer for the parents of college aged children. As they change over between semesters their classes change, which means new books, and new supplies for each class.
So there is no question that spending for back-to-school adds up…the question now is, how to save money doing it? There are many places that take places in sales and put out special coupons specifically around back-to-school time to encourage customers to get started early and save money, and many of them are worth taking advantage of. On the Time to Save website alone, parents that have children in grades K-12 or college aged kids can save money on many of their purchases. Online companies such as Best Buy, EBooks.com, Lowes, and ECampus.com can help with saving on electronics and textbooks, and for school supplies there are deals available with Discount School Supply’s website. Also for college freshmen or any student in need of laptops, there are deals available with HP.
So whether you started your shopping early, and need emergency supplies halfway through the years, or your college freshman crashed their laptop software trying to stream music while writing a paper, there are always deals available to help you save on the necessities, and life’s typical curveballs.
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