Saving on school supplies

Each year around this time, I’m asked by my readers how we can save big on school supplies! I wrote this post last year during school supply season, and everything in it holds true for this year as well. The biggest thing to remember is to stagger the shopping over the next couple of weeks and ONLY buy the loss-leader-priced items that are on your child’s list. Last year, I got my daughter’s entire list done for just over $5!

Don’t take your child’s school supply list to the store and buy everything in one trip.
Almost every store has sales on school supplies already, and if they don’t, the sales are coming. However, no single store is going to have everything on your child’s list on sale the same week — and the stores do this intentionally. They love it when you are drawn in by cheap prices on crayons and notebook paper… and then buy the rest of the items on your child’s list at full price.

Buy just the “loss leaders” and save big
Lots of retailers are planning 1-cent and 5-cent sales on school supplies this season to lure shoppers to the store. Buy just the items that are cheap each week, and then wait for the next “5-cent sale” on more items in weeks to come.

Buy a little at a time, wherever you are.
I normally don’t advocate “chasing” store to store for the best deals — it wastes time and gas. But since school supplies will be on sale for the next month, keep your child’s supply list with you and “skim” the sales wherever you are already planning to shop anyway. If you go to one store and glue sticks and paints are cheap there, get them. When you go to your grocery store, see what’s cheap there too. This way, you’re only “shopping the sales” and reducing the number of things you need to pay full price for.

Look in unconventional places for coupons … and don’t forget to “stack.”
Believe it or not, there are coupons for school supplies too. In a package of cheese sticks, I found a coupon for $1.00 off Crayola products. Crayola colored pencils were on sale for 50 cents – so that was a “moneymaker” deal in which the coupon’s additional 50 cents’ value came off something else I was purchasing that day. Coupons.com currently has a coupon for $1.00 off Bic pens, but a bag of Bic pens is on sale (at the time of this writing) at Jewel for 50 cents — so I got 2 bags of pens for free. And, don’t forget to use store’s coupons in conjunction with manufacturer’s — most stores will let you combine the two coupons on one item for big savings.

School’s supply packs are never a way to save money… just time.
Schools will often offer a prepackaged set of school supplies that you can purchase during registration for the next year. These are usually $40-$50 and promise “savings” over purchasing these things yourself — don’t fall for it. I will likely spend less than $10 on my daughter’s school supplies this year. The only thing these packs save is time. You can spend money to save time, or you can spend time to save money. If you’re reading this, I hope you want to do the latter :)