Mrs. Pinchpenny shares her favorite tips for saving money while back to school shopping.
Excerpt:
Back to School Without Breaking the Bank
Mrs. Pinchpenny
Back to school means so many great things. Its exciting for everyone. Kids get to get to see their friends again after a long summer, and make new ones. They can look forward to learning new things and new experiences.
Who isnt excited the first day of school? Maybe the parent who has an empty wallet after just spending several hundred dollars for their kids to go back to school. Its expensive at any age, whether your kids are starting out in kindergarten or heading off to college.
Between the supplies, the new clothes, and textbooks, the parents are the ones who are often left scrambling to figure out how to afford it all. The National Retail Federation expects the sales of back to school and back to college to be around $54 billion dollars this year. Sales that are second only to Christmas and Halloween sales. So every retailer is vying for your dollars, from big discount stores to online stores and catalogs. Everyone wants your dollar.
Back to college is even more expensive and of that $54 billion dollars spent, over $36.6 billion is for back to college spending.
Parents of college kids often find themselves taking out loans just to cover college tuition, racking up even more debt they cant afford. Today when budgets are stretched tight, inflation is affecting everything from gas to food, raising prices to record levels. Back to school shopping means dollars that many families cant afford and its straining many small families finances to the brink.
