School’s back, and so are all the expenses





It’s Aug. 24. Do you know where your summer went?

In another week, kids will be back at school, days will be getting shorter and traffic will snarl at every campus.

The end of summer is bittersweet, but also a relief to some parents, especially those with younger children who have been underfoot since June, frequently complaining about boredom. Nobody wants to admit it, but schools also serve as great babysitters.

Now the expensive part: the purchase of new classroom supplies, clothes and fees for extracurricular activities. It can cost more than $500 to send each child in kindergarten through 12th grade back to public school. Many kids want all their stuff to be trendy and new. That’s the distressing part.

To protect your pocketbook this year, how about using again that nearly perfect, three-ring binder from last year? Do all the pens, pencils and rulers have to be new?

How many protractors should one family have to buy?

For college students, try buying used textbooks online instead of shelling out megabucks at the campus store. Think recycling.

Many costs are unavoidable. Expect to pay an extra $500, or twice that if you have two children in high school and one is on the football team and the other is a cheerleader. Want to join the band? Get ready to fork over some significant cash.

Complaining about back-to-school expenses has become a rite of summer, and for good reason. According to the National Retail Federation, the combined $54 billion that consumers are expected to spend this year for back-to-school and back-to-college expenses will rank second only to holiday spending.

The big ticket item in college spending will be electronics. College students are expected to spend 27.5 percent more this year on electronic items as the category expands to include notebook computers, flat-screen televisions, Xboxes and iPods. Yesterday’s typewriter is today’s computer, and the cost difference is huge.

On the other hand, nothing’s more valuable than your child’s education. Think of these expenses as an investment in the future.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *