Back-to-School Shopping: A Class in Saving Cash

This just might be the first “normal’ school year in quite a while. COVID is thankfully behind us, inflation is slowing, and if we never hear the term “supply chain constraints” again, we’ll all be very happy. So if everything goes right, this will be a typical school year. I think we’re all looking forward to that. And I hope you’re looking forward to saving a lot of money, because we have some not-so-typical tips for doing that. So, let’s get started.

For the winter holidays, the average American spends around $1,000 on gifts and celebrations. Back-to-school is less than that, at $685 per child. But it’s still more than we spend on Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Valentine’s Day combined. (That cumulative total, by the way, comes to just over $560 a year.) So, you can see why back-to-school is big business. Which means, of course, it’s ripe for big savings. Sadly, though, it’s also easy to overspend. Here are 10 easy tips you can use to save on school supplies this year.

Every parent knows that the easiest way to overspend is to shop without a list. But you’d be surprised how many parents ignore the lists provided by their children’s very own school. Many schools these days offer a “supply list” explicitly so parents don’t buy more than they need. Such lists can spare you from buying expensive electronics or even notebooks your child really doesn’t need to get an A-plus. How do you find this list? It’s usually right on the school’s website.

This sounds so simple, it can’t possibly save you money. But trust us, we’ve heard from so many clients over the years who opened desk drawers, looked in the back of bedroom closets and kitchen cabinets, and scoured garages and attics. They regularly found new or slightly used items they could check off their children’s back-to-school shopping list. We’re talking about pens, pencils, notebooks, bookbags, folders, book covers, and even clothing that fit an older child and was stored and then forgotten now that a younger child might need it.

So here’s another non-shopping tip we’ve seen work quite well. You can gather friends and neighbors with school-aged kids and throw them a party. But just like a potluck, they can’t come empty-handed. They must bring back-to-school items they either don’t need or have too much of. That could mean clothing from a child who outgrew them or too much loose-leaf paper they bought in bulk. In fact, many parents throw these parties annually, which means they intentionally buy in bulk – which saves big for not only themselves but others, who return the favor.

Don’t buy pricey items they’re just going to lose anyway. Well, that goes double and triple for back-to-school shopping! When one company polled parents about this very topic, they found that 80 percent reported their children had lost some important item at school. That includes book bags, lunch boxes, and school supplies – but also hats, gloves, and clothes. So our first helpful tip is this: Don’t spend a lot of money on any item you know your child could easily lose. Then spend a few more dollars on labels for every item. Why? Because in that same poll of parents, labeled items were almost always returned.

Veteran back-to-school shoppers will tell you: Before they log onto a website or drive to a store, they start with garage sales and thrift stores. Especially as the school year approaches, thrift stores realize they have a huge market looking for deals. So they trot out their best gently used items that parents covet. Garage sales are a little more hit and miss, but it can be worth the time to score a nice backpack and some clothes. If you have friends who hit garage sales as their hobby, tell them to keep their eyes peeled for back-to-school items you could use.

So now we’re working our way up the spending ladder. Dollar stores have the best deals for stocking up on the smallest items. We’re talking pens, pencils, notebooks, and even Kleenex and hand sanitizer. While your kids might chafe at wearing hand-me-down clothes to the first days of school, you won’t get much argument about these kinds of school supplies. Thank God!

Before you buy online, use one of these apps to help you find the best deals. There are also many others out there that allow you to make a list of desired items, then tell you when a good deal is being offered. Most of the ones you see here are pegged to Amazon, but BayWatch monitors deals on eBay, while the Mac Index does the same for the sale of Apple products. You can find these price-monitoring programs everywhere, and you don’t need to be tech savvy to take advantage of them. Try one or more and see if you save big.

OK, now we’re getting into the guts of it: back-to-school shopping! Now that we’ve laid the groundwork, time to aim high. We all have only so much time and energy. Better to use both by saving money on bigger-ticket items like computers, tablets, and other electronics. Saving $300 on a laptop is better than saving $5 on a lunch box or 25 cents on a bottle of glitter glue.

And the best way to save on electronics? Learn this word: refurbished. It’s like the term “pre-owned” for cars. Basically, these are computers, phones, and tablets that have been thoroughly cleaned and fixed, and they come with warranties, too. While you can sometimes find the latest models “refurbed,” most likely, you’re talking about these items being a generation or two older. But for a kid at school, it’s not about bragging rights, it’s about affordable education.

Besides, for image-conscious kids, we’ve learned this trick: Spend an extra $20 on a cover that your kid likes, and no one will ever know you saved $500 on a refurbed device.

At most retailers, weekly sales start Sunday mornings. Back-to-school inventory isn’t always restocked quickly – or at all if you’re shopping in August. If you want the best deals both online and, in the store,, don’t wait till the end of the week. Hit those sales as early in the week as you possibly can.

This tip depends on where you live. 16 states offer back-to-school sales tax holidays. During these few days, certain items are exempt from state sales tax, which can be an instant savings of up to 7 percent, depending on the state. Most of these sales-tax holidays happen during the first week of August, although they can range from late July to the end of August. That’s about as specific as we can get, because these states are forever tinkering with these dates, so every year can be a little different. But your local newspaper and even Google will announce the dates at the beginning of summer. It’s worth making a note to check that out.

We’re not big fans of the extreme couponing trend, mostly because we preach moderation in all things. You can spend many hours clipping coupons to save not very much. But when it comes to back-to-school shopping, we’re big advocates of being extreme for a very brief time.

So you can scour the Internet for coupon sites, and we wouldn’t object, but we suggest a simpler way: Find the stores you love and follow them on Twitter. Keep checking your feed, because stores like the ones listed here have gotten quite sophisticated about tweeting out back-to-school deals. Thing is, some of these are “flash sales,” which means they come and go quickly. So, keep that phone handy!

As you might expect, what kids really want in their back-to-school supplies changes over the years – and of course, that grows more expensive. Your young children will covet crayons and markers, as well as notebooks with their favorite cartoon or movie characters.

By the time they hit middle school, the emphasis is on the fanciest pens and highlighters, plus the coolest backpacks. And, of course, notebooks with their favorite musicians and sports stars. And in high school? It’s all about electronics and laptops and other tech – plus, of course, notebooks with their favorite people on them.

Notice we didn’t include clothing on this list. Some kids care, some don’t. But if you understand what your child will want at different stages of their development, you can take that into account before you go shopping.

Teaching your children about money can be a real chore, because depending on their ages, they believe you’re a bottomless ATM. Games like Monopoly teach them about what things cost, but back-to-school can be a game in real life. While most children aren’t historically excited about the end of summer break and the beginning of school, many do enjoy getting new stuff for their first day back. We’ve known many parents who use that excitement for educational purposes. They sit with their children and give them a budget and a list: We have this much to spend on the following items.

Then they search online for those items, with the parent adding up the expenses. As the child goes nuts and blows the budget in the first few minutes, the parent can look ruefully at the list and say, “Sorry, dear, we’ve already spent everything.” You can see where this is going. In a few minutes, we’ll double back and tell you how far you can take it.

OK, this is the part of back-to-school shopping that excites us the most. Savvy parents use back-to-school to secretly teach their kids lessons about money. Of course, good parents are always trying to teach their children about money. A lot of times, it’s tough to keep them interested. But back-to-school is a great opportunity because many kids care about the clothes and supplies, they’ll first bring to class. So let’s see how that works.

Many parents give an allowance for household chores, and they let their children blow that money on impulse buys. This teaches the kids that money is finite – and when they run out, they have to wait until they’re paid again.  You can use an allowance as an extra lesson during back-to-school shopping. As we mentioned, you can give your children a back-to-school budget. If they complain that it’s too low, tell them they can supplement it – with their own allowance.

In our experience, this is what you’ll hear next: “But that’s MY money!” You can then tell them, “Yes, but everything else is MY money! No one likes spending THEIR money! It’s easy to spend OTHER people’s money!” And a lesson is learned.

Back-to-school is a perfect time to teach your young teens about the power of comparison shopping. We mentioned earlier how you can sit with them and shop online, watching as a lean back-to-school budget soon disappears. But you can also strike a deal with them: On your own, if you can find better bargains for the items you want, I’ll let you spend the rest on back-to-school items of your choice. So locate those bargains and come back to me.

Inevitably, your child will find some deals that really aren’t. We’re talking about discounts for surrendering scads of personal information, or even downright scams. This is the perfect time to teach your children that if something sounds too good to be true, it is. So they’ll learn about good shopping and bad shopping, all while scoring excellent back-to-school deals. A win-win-win!

Credit card debt is a huge problem in this country. There’s almost one trillion dollars of it, and the average American household carries nearly $8,000 in credit card balances each month. You can help your children avoid this plight by using back-to-school shopping as a plastic tactic.

For instance, if your teens want a budget-busting laptop, let them charge it against their future allowance. But also charge your teens an extra 25 percent for the privilege. So if they need $200 extra, you tell them you’ll give them $200 now – but they owe you $250 in future allowances. When they cry foul, you get to explain the concept of interest charges – and how all credit cards work.

Thank you!