Too much hype about back to school shopping!
Those are the boys last September on their first days of school (Ethan in K and Ben preschool). I do not want this summer to end! I am not a huge fan of 85 degrees or higher temps but I love having all 4 kids home all day and I am trying to not think about school until the last minute. I love having “little kids” and the boys are getting big too fast now that both will be in real school. Oh but this is a post about back-to-school- shopping budgets isn’t it…did I mention that yet?
I am not doing “back-to-school” shopping so that’s how I’m budgeting! I have a son going into 1st grade, one starting kindergarten and a daughter who will be going to preschool 2 days a week (yay for Jillian who is still too little for anything!). They are all young enough that they rarely want to pick out what they wear and since we get A LOT of really nice hand me down clothes I don’t think we will need that much for the kids. I’m pretty picky about what they wear and I don’t think their wardrobes are lacking at all. The grandmothers always pick out a few new things and otherwise I am just going to wait and get them things as they need them. I only anticipate buying new sneakers for all the kids, maybe some extra pants for the boys if it seems they need them and I also hope to find winter coats that I like better than the 3-in-1 Children’s Place ones I bought last year (I bought big so they will still fit again this year if I don’t see better ones). Besides school clothes there are school supplies but I always have those types of things on hand anyway. When I looked at the boys’ lists all that I still need to buy are a couple boxes of tissues. I’m not sure what all the hype is about back to school shopping, just get things for kids as the outgrow their old things! Why does it have to be a big rush to get a ton of clothes and things before the start of the year especially when they are little? I remember my mom taking me back to school shopping when I was in middle school and we got way too many clothes and she spent way too much. I felt like I needed “cool” clothes to fit in and guilty for the price tag. Luckily I think I outgrew that phase by 10th grade. I don’t know how things will be in our family when the kids are more into fashion and what “everyone else” has but I hope they aren’t too worried about that sort of thing. I imagine we’ll let each kid pick out a few things they really want or give them each a certain budget to spend and let them figure out what to spend it on. Plus when they are older they don’t outgrow things as much so clothes should last a lot longer! I won’t mind buying some trendy expensive things that they’ll want but I will not let them go overboard unless they have jobs to buy the things themselves! For those of you who have kids who could use some budgeting ideas check out Capital One’s Moneywi$e eLearning tool, which includes a section all about talking to kids about money. Plus, check out @TeachingMoney on Twitter to get bite-sized family-focused financial tips.
*I wrote this post to participate in the Parent Bloggers Network’s latest Blog Blast, something I haven’t done it what seems like FOREVER!
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I always giggle when I see all the Back to School Hype. Like you, we get a lot of great hand-me-downs, and my kids don’t really care about new clothes, as long as they are “new-to-them.”
Also, I have a nice stockpile of office supplies that always seem to match up with the school lists, so we’re good to go.