Summer seems to have passed by quickly, and now it seems like parents and their children are already preparing for a new school year.

While the average parent will spend $673.57 per child for items needed, it doesn’t have to be so expensive. There are lots of ways to prepare for back to school on a budget.

Check Your Inventory

First things first, check your inventory. You may find supplies, clothes that your kids can fit into now, and more. As you are going through the supplies you have, keep a running checklist of things you may need or that come to mind. If you have a list of items needed from your child’s school, you can just add on to this list.

Checking your inventory helps you prepare for back to school on a budget by helping you avoid buying extra things you may not even need. Why buy an extra pack of crayons if you already have three?

Set Your Budget

Once you’ve gone through your inventory, the next step is to actually set a budget for your back to school shopping. Every family’s financial situation is different, but you should at least aim to only spend what you have in cash to spend.

If that means only $100 for each child, that’s OK. With these tips, you should be able to prepare for back to school on a budget, even if your budget is smaller.

Shop Sales and Clearance Racks

Now that you have your list and your budget set, you can get to shopping. The easiest way for preparing back to school on a budget is to buy what you can on sale or clearance. Many stores have back to school sales, so make sure you read their flyers or online options before shopping at one place.

If you find deals at multiple stores, don’t be afraid to make a few stops. You are trying to get the best price and stay within budget. If there are items on your list that you can’t find on sale or clearance, there are other options to consider as well, like thrift stores and shopping online.

Shop Thrift Stores

Thrift stores are typically known for their clothing and home items, but you can find school supplies too. From backpacks to pencils, you may be able to complete your shopping list at the thrift store. Plus, if your children do need clothes, you may be able to find gently used clothing for a lot cheaper than what you’d spend for brand new clothes.

I highly suggest buying clothes from a thrift store if your kids need them, especially if they are younger. Since children grow so fast, it doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of money on clothes that they will outgrow soon anyway.

Look Online

If you still haven’t completed your list, or if you don’t want to go through the hassle of shopping back to school sales, you can always prepare for back to school on a budget online. Many of the stores that hold sales in store will also have the sales available online. If not, there are online-only stores that may be running sales as well.

Another great way to save money while shopping online is to sign up for the store’s email list. You can typically get 10-25% off of your first order, or even get discounts for being a repeat customer. Couple that with an ongoing sale, and you can save a ton of money.

Buy School Items In Bulk

If you have multiple children going back to school, buying in bulk may be the best option for you. Places like Sam’s Club and Costco typically have back to school items for deep discounts around July and August.

I’d only recommend this option if you have more than two kids, and you have compared prices from the bulk stores to prices at non-bulk stores. However, if you can save money that way, buying in bulk is a smart move.

Work With Your Child

If your child is of working age (or even in college) you can always have them pay for some of their items. For example, if you have a set budget for your child, but they want a special item that isn’t in the budget, you can have them pay for a certain amount of the item, or buy it themselves.

As a parent, it may be hard for you to let your child pay for things, but not only will this teach them responsibility, but it will also teach them the value of a dollar and how far their money goes based on what they buy. It’s okay to want Nike shoes, but if you don’t have the money to pay for them, you either have to skip out on buying them or earn the money needed. As a teenager or college student, this is an important skill for your child to know.

These tips are great to help you prepare for back to school on a budget, but there are so many other ways to cut costs. As long as you have the essentials, like your list and a budget, you should be able to save money and get all that you need for a lot less than the average.

Preparing For Back To School On A Budget is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.

Technology is an integral part of daily life. People use social media sites, online networking, and technology for everything from staying connected with family and friends to career advancement.

The benefits are extending to the classroom with innovative technology used in the classroom and for schools and teachers to connect with students, parents, and communities. Living Tree is an innovate private social network for schools that leverages technology to enhance communication, collaboration, and partnerships in the context of K-12 education.

Creating a private social network offers advantages for family communication with each other, teachers, schools, and community organizations. Teachers, schools, and school districts have implemented technology in various ways to increase family engagement in education technology for the benefit of students. Check livingtree.com to learn how easy it is to create your own private social network.

Backed by Research

Research has been conducted by the Harvard Family Research Project on how technology is being used to engage families in the education of their children. The research shows several positive results of implementing technology to engage families. The researchers found that using technology to engage families helps them become more involved in education, which offers advantages for student achievement, such as better grades in elementary and high school, higher graduation rates, better attendance, and a higher rate of students going on to higher education.

The United Way has implemented projects that are designed to support communities in improving education and reducing dropout rates using technology. Their projects utilize technologies that include text messaging and online data systems to facilitate communication between families, students, and schools.

Technology has been used in high school classrooms for several years with great success. In recent years, the use of technology has expanded, with teachers, schools, and entire school districts now using this idea to support academic performance and family involvement from Pre-Kindergarten through high school graduation.

How Technology is Used in Schools

Online data systems have been used for a number of years by school districts across the country. A username and password are supplied to parents to log in to the online data system. This enables parents to keep track of how their students are doing in school, check upcoming assignments and tests, attendance, and other details.

Parent groups, sports teams, and organizations have created their own pages and groups on social media sites for the purpose of communication and collaboration. However, privacy issues prevent many from making this leap. A private social network offers enhanced security that social media cannot guarantee. Private social networks are used by families to stay organized and communicate with teachers, schools, and sports teams. Schools and community organizations can use the network for event planning, volunteer signups, and communication. Teachers are able to engage more effectively with their students and families. 

Increasingly, people are using mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets to access the internet, send emails, and keep track of schedules and activities. A family engagement app allows parents to receive notifications and communicate with the network using a smartphone or tablet, so notifications are received and everyone gets where they need to be on time.

Creating a Safe Social Network for K-12 Schools is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.

When you go shopping this time of year, you’ll likely notice a change in the atmosphere. Instead of bathing suits and red, white, and blue picnic plates, there are lists, glue, and paper. The stores are stocking up on all of the new pencils, notebook paper, planners, and backpacks. The smell of new pens waiting to be opened, pencils ready to be sharpened, and the feeling of a perfect folder, all shimmery in the plastic – it’s intoxicating.

Childless adults might lament on the passing of time and remember childhood, but luckily, you don’t have to have children to take advantage of all of the back to school sales and specials. Even if you don’t have children, here are some ways you can take advantage of back to school sales.

Office Supplies

Now is the time to stock up on the basic must haves for your home office! Just because you don’t have children of your own, doesn’t mean you don’t need a fun folder or binder to spice up your office. Also, by taking advantage of these sales you can purchase school supplies and donate them to a local shelter or school program that gives away backpacks full of supplies to those children in need who can’t afford to get their back-to-school basics. This will make your donation dollars stretch further.

Plastic Storage Baggies

Plastic bags are a must-have for student lunches and are usually on sale during the lead-up to back to school. Take advantage of these prices and stock up for your kitchen. They are great for taking snacks on road trips and lots of other uses too.

Storage Containers and Boxes

August doesn’t just mean elementary or high school starting, it’s also college season! New freshmen moving into dorms, seniors moving into apartments – they both need plastic bins and storage containers to organize their new living spaces. As a childless adult, you can take advantage of this too and purchase what you need to get your home organized.

Lighting and Home Decor

Want to string some of those globe lights across your patio? Go look in the college section. They have pretty much the same product but for less money. Dorm rooms are no longer a plain white cell; they have become rooms to express yourself in. Comfy chairs, lighting, wall décor, rugs, are all sold for a lower price than usual during back to school sales. Some of these things can even work in a non-college decor theme.

Clothing

Big brands and retailers have back to school deals on clothing and shoes. This is a good time of year to give your wardrobe an update and save money.

Vacations

As summer winds down you can definitely take advantage of resorts and tourist attractions wanting to grab you one last time before you are booked up for the fall. There are lower prices and you can sometimes can nab a great package for a winter or fall vacation by booking during back to school sales.

Food

A lot of  convenience food and snacks are on sale during back to school time. Things like chip packs, fruit snacks, and cereal go on sale to appeal to children who take their lunches to school. Grab some for yourself and relive your childhood, or use them as grab and go food when you schedule is packed or you have a road trip to pack for.

Laptops and Electronics

If you were thinking of buy that computer, now is the time to do it. As students get ready to go back to school, whether in college or high school, the prices and deals on electronics are great. Sometimes there are great packaged deals of a tablet with the cover and detachable keyboard, or a computer with a printer or desktop publishing software. These accessories can be expensive, so look for these bundle deals during back to school to save money.

As you can see there are a lot of sales that you can cash in on, while getting some great gear, even if you don’t have kids. Don’t ignore the back to school sale ads, there is something that you can get out of them as well.

If you’re childless, do you shop back to school sales?

8 Ways Childless Adults Can Take Advantage of Back to School Sales is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.

Cute + cookie dough = sale. It’s automatic.

If cookie dough, cheap jewelry, Oreo churros and expensive candles, among other junk from Believe Kids, are making the rounds in your neighborhood, you know that summer is over and kids are back in school. Forget falling leaves and cool winds when looking for the start of the fall season. Cookie dough for $17 is for sale, marking the start of fall.

My daughter’s school started its fall fundraiser recently, and while she and her classmates are told not to sell items door-to-door, they are expected to push their cuteness and fundraising goals upon their families. If you can’t sell a $16 pumpkin roll to Grandma, then you aren’t cut out to be in sales.

Is shilling a life skill?

I’m all for giving extra money to schools. I wrote my daughter’s school a big check before school started this year. I understand the need for raising money for extra activities and supplies that the school can’t afford on its own.

Where I lose it is in trying to understand the logic in teaching my kid to shill for cookie dough to her friends and family. The school has all kinds of prizes — which I’ll detail soon — to encourage kids to sell things for which they have an astronomical chance of winning a prize for, and the kids don’t get a cut of the profits. Even in the name of charity, which I don’t think the Parent-Faculty Club is anyway, that isn’t much of an incentive to sell.

There’s also the factor that if everyone kid you know is selling the same stuff, what are the chances that they’ll find customers who aren’t already being bombarded by other eager, young salespeople?

If teaching my kid to sell cookie dough and other crap is a lesson her school wants to teach, then let’s skip middle school and go straight to a trade school. Or better yet, put the kids on the streets immediately and have them learn on the job until they outgrow their cuteness.

Selling knives in Oakland

I know first-hand the joys of selling things for charity and for profit. In fifth grade a friend and I went door-to-door selling candy bars for our school. I’m sure we ate/bought more candy than we sold.

Prizes may be enough incentive for young kids, but I think the best incentive is cash. Give the kids a cut of the profit that Otis Spunkmeyer is pulling out of its cookie dough hard-press around the country, and you’ll really move product.

I sold newspaper subscriptions for a few months one year when I was about 14, and I sold a lot of subscriptions. How? I was paid cash for every subscriber I signed up.

A guy in a van dropped me and a bunch of other kids off in the lower hills of Oakland, Calif., a city known even back then for high crime. As a gift to subscribers, we were given huge kitchen knives to give them on the spot if they signed up. That’s right — kids were giving away knives in Oakland.

I gave away more knives and sold more newspapers than anyone else. I don’t know remember how I did it, but I remember opening the cardboard case with the knife inside and showing it to potential customers. The things sold themselves.

I eventually stopped selling the Oakland Tribune this way because one night — a school night — the van showed up after nightfall and me and a bunch of other kids were left stranded on a corner with nothing but newspapers and knives with us. At least we could offer people something to read or could defend ourselves in a knife fight if it came to it. That was enough door-to-door knife selling for me.

$170 buys a lot of cookie dough

To raise the $15,000 that my daughter’s Parent-Faculty Club wants to raise, it asks that each family sell at least 10 items. At $17 or so per item, that’s $170. That’s a lot of cookie dough. Our friends, family and co-workers are going to have to start exercising.

The young sellers are also encouraged to email family and friends to buy so they can win more prizes. More fun in your in-box! The website offers instant prizes to sellers.

The school’s main way to encourage kids to sell is with prizes offered at school. Each student gets a number and if their number is called among the hundreds of students each day, they get a $10 iTunes gift card if they’ve made one sale. If they sell 10 items by the end of the sale, they get a $20 iTunes gift card.

The prizes only get better:

• Sell five items for a set of fake mustaches and a free PE pass.
• Sell 10 items for the Secret Prize.
• Sell 15 or more items to participate in Cash Grab, where a sack is willed with bills ranging from $1 to $50, and you keep whatever bill you draw.
• Sell 25 items to “roll in the dough.” No, it’s not cookie dough. You roll in cash and keep what sticks to tape applied to your clothes.
• Sell 50 items for a $25 gift card to Best Buy or Target.
• The top selling class gets an ice cream party.
• The top selling class from each grade will get to participate in the pig races.

My guess is that the ice cream party is more than enough incentive for kids to sell cookie dough and other goodies for their school.

A fake mustache and free PE pass may be enough to get kids excited about selling, but if organizers want to be fair and show them how the economy works in real life, they’ll offer them something a lot better: Cash.

Why My Kid’s School is Teaching Her to Shill Cookie Dough is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.

The typical family with children in grades K-12 plans to spend $630.36 on electronics, apparel and other school needs in its back-to-school shopping plans, down from $669.28 last year, according to a survey released July 15 by the National Retail Federation and conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics. The poll of 6,500 consumers was conducted June 30-July 8. The consumer polls have a margin of error of plus or minus 1.2 percentage points.

There’s no question that back-to-school shopping can take a big bite out of your budget. If kids are young, you may feel you have little choice with the long lists of required items, but save where you can. It can pay to stock up on loss leaders — often crayons, paper or pens — and lay in a supply for the whole school year. Or, it may be smart to wait until seasonal items (dorm sheets and decor) go on sale.

Back-to-school shopping falls for college students

“Spending on ‘back to school’ has consistently fluctuated based on children’s needs each year, and it’s unlikely most families would need to restock and replenish apparel, electronics and supplies every year,” said NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay in a press release. “Parents this summer will inventory their children’s school supplies and decide what is needed and what can be reused, which just makes good budgeting sense for families with growing children.”

The picture was much the same for parents of college students. Spending was expected to drop to $899.18, down slightly from last year’s $916.48.

Nearly 20% of families hoped to begin their back-to-school shopping at least two months before the start of school, reflecting both a desire to comparison-shop to find the best deals and to spread out the expenses.

How to Pay for Supplies This Year

If you need to buy now, using your credit cards wisely could help you later. If you have a rewards credit card, that might be a smart way to pay for school supplies. Buying what you would have bought anyway and paying the full balance on time is the best way to earn points or rewards without losing out to interest charges.

Back-to-school shopping time can also be a good time to shop for a new card (or to review those you already have to make sure you maximize rewards). Discover it, for example, offers 5% back on purchases at home improvement stores, department stores and Amazon through September. The card also offers 12 months of interest-free financing. (It requires good to excellent credit; if you are not sure where you stand, you can get your free credit report summary, updated every 30 days, from Credit.com. You can also use that knowledge to help you find a credit card that is geared toward your credit standing.)

If you do not typically pay balances off in full and you have a card that is still in an introductory interest-free period, that could be a good choice, but be sure you know when that period ends and have a solid plan for getting the balance paid off. You can use this credit card payoff calculator to come up with that plan.

Another option, when you know you have a fairly big expense coming such as back-to-school shopping, is to use that planned splurge to make sure you have the qualifying minimum spend for a credit card sign-up bonus. For example, the Chase Sapphire Preferred card currently offers 40,000 bonus miles if you spend $4,000 in three months. That card also requires good credit.

If your credit hasn’t yet reached the point where issuers are willing to offer perks to get you to apply, you can still use back-to-school time to build your credit. If you use credit cards for back-to-school shopping, try to keep balances low and to be sure that you pay on time — those two factors are the biggest contributors to your credit standing.

Note: It’s important to remember that interest rates, fees and terms for credit cards, loans and other financial products frequently change. As a result, rates, fees and terms for credit cards, loans and other financial products cited in these articles may have changed since the date of publication. Please be sure to verify current rates, fees and terms with credit card issuers, banks or other financial institutions directly.

Related Articles

• Why Your Credit Card Balance Affects Your Credit Score
• The Best Credit Cards in America
• Chase Slate Review: A Good Bet for Balance Transfers

This article originally appeared on Credit.com.

This article by Gerri Detweiler was distributed by the Personal Finance Syndication Network.

Source

Back-to-School Shopping: How Much Will You Spend? is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.