Back-to-School Savings

Back-to-school season can be both tiring and expensive.  School supplies, clothes, books, shoes, and enrolment can be costly.  And with the global recession and shrinking of many currencies’ buying power, where does that put the ordinary folk?  To help save, we have come up with a list of tips.

Recycle

Everything need not be new.  Shoes, clothes, lunch boxes, and left-over pens, pencils and pad papers can still be used for the coming school year.  Hence, bring out last year’s boxes and search for usable materials.  These should provide substantial savings.

Bargain hunting

Stores normally have back-to-school promos wherein prices are slashed by as much as 50 percent.  Discount stores are places you would want to explore as well.  But don’t limit yourself to stores and garage sales. Auction websites or sites such as Craig’s List will work as well. With so many people trying to turn their unused stuff into liquid cash, you are sure to get good deals out of them.

Buy items with size allowances 

Think about buying shoes for your kids that are one size bigger.  By doing this, they may be able to use the shoes for up to two years, delaying the purchase of a new pair by at least another year.

Buy the right computer

Unless your child is a graphic design or an architecture student, a typical computer will do.  By typical we mean the usual Core 2 Duo processor, 1 gigabyte of RAM, DVD-rom, 124 megabyte-graphics card will do.  These computers are more than strong enough to run word processors, spreadsheets, and Internet browsers for their school research.  Make it clear to the kids that your purchase of a computer is mainly for school assignments and not for games.

Use this as an opportunity to teach

As always, financial IQ is never too early to be taught.  The earlier you teach them, the more aware they become of wise spending principles

The savings you make on these bargains are quite considerable once you put them all together and should be able to help you during these times.