Back to school shopping

In today’s economy, everyone is trying to save a buck. With outrageous gas prices and soaring grocery bills, everyone’s cutting corners and trying to get the most for their money. Back to school shopping can be expensive, especially when you’ve got more than one kid in school. Trust me, I have four school-aged kids this year and it seems as if the school supply lists were longer than ever. Then, of course, came the clothes shopping.

I did manage to improve my shopping habits this year and ended up spending way less than what I normally do on back to school expenses.

The first thing I did was go through all of the kids’ clothes. I took inventory of what they had, what they needed, and what they could live without.

I gathered up all the clothes that were still in good condition but were no longer being worn and took them to a consignment shop where I was given store credit for the value of the clothes. Using that store credit, I was able to get several good, name-brand shirts in excellent condition for each of the kids. I think altogether I got about 15 shirts for right around $35. That comes out to less than $3 a piece.

I probably could have sold the clothes on eBay and made more money on them, but I didn’t want to go through the hassle of photographing, listing, shipping, etc. This way was easier for me and it only took one day, where eBay would have taken at least a week.

Next, I made a list of what each kid absolutely needed. Socks, underwear, shorts, etc. Then I headed to the local thrift stores. My favorites are Goodwill and Salvation Army. They have great sales and the clothes are almost always in excellent condition. There, I was able to find shorts, shirts, pants, and a couple of sweaters/light jackets for cool mornings. I spent about $60 and each kid got about 4 outfits. Keep in mind, that these are pretty much all name-brand clothes that I’m buying and they’re all in excellent condition. It takes a little extra time to dig through the racks to find the good stuff sometimes, but it is worth it when you can get a shirt for a dollar that normally retails for $15.

After that, I went to Walmart and bought all new socks and underwear for each kid, which cost me about $50. My twins are really into Hannah Montana, and Walmart has an extensive line of her clothing, so I got them each a HM shirt there which cost me about $18.

I also went to JCPenney, Stage, and Payless Shoe Source. Each store was running some kind of special and the kids ended up with 3 more outfits each and 2 pair of shoes each. Altogether, I spent about $160 at these stores.

Which brought my total amount spent on school clothes to about $275 or close to $70 a kid. And they all got enough clothes to last them at least couple of months. I’ll have to get them a few more pair of pants when the weather turns but for now, they’re good.

Last year, I bought everything new and spent about 3 times what I did this year and got less.

With the supplies, I pretty much went straight by the list. Even getting all the brands asked for. I bought them all at Walmart because they had a decent sale and spent a total of $97 on supplies, including backpacks. I even bought all 8 reams of copy paper that was requested. Guess I was feeling generous after saving all that money on the clothes.

Lesson learned: Less really is more, if you play your (debit) cards right.