Yahoo Finance What if You Can't Afford Your Kids' School Supplies?
You don't have to go to school to do math. You could make up some interesting equations using the amounts of money Americans spend on back-to-school supplies. According to an annual survey from the National Retail Federation, total spending on school supplies is expected to reach $75.8 billion this year. Last year, it was $68 million. That's a percentage increase of ... uh ... well ... maybe you do have to go to school to do math.
Anyway, what consumers spend on school supplies is high. Parents will drop an average of $674 on school supplies this year, up from $630 last year.
But what should you do if you don't have $674 on hand or can't afford everything on your child's school-supply list? Try these strategies.
[See: Avoid These Common Pitfalls During the Back-to-School Shopping Trip.]
1. If you have no money for school supplies whatsoever ...
It isn't easy to admit that you can't afford notebooks and pencils, and if that's all it was, of course, you might not have a problem. The problem is that your children may also need a backpack, a lunchbox, 2-inch binders, folders, glue, scissors, a certain type of calculator and on and on.
But as long as you're willing to make some phone calls, you can probably get everything your children need, says Dave Smith, executive director of the Kids in Need Foundation, a national nonprofit headquartered in Minneapolis.
"I don't think it's necessary these days for kids to go to school without supplies," Smith says.
He adds that he recognizes just how hard it can be to make those phone calls.
[See: 10 Things to Know Before Shopping for Back-to-School Supplies.]
The KINF works with teachers and school districts throughout the country to provide free school supplies directly to in-need students through backpack programs, free teacher resource centers and a teacher grant program. If you're lacking the money to buy school supplies, Smith suggests several steps, in no particular order:
-- Call a local social service agency. That might be a local United Way agency or a Boys & Girls club, he says. You could also contact your church or a synagogue. "If you do a little research, you can find somebody who will help you," he says.
-- Call your school. Yes, schools are well-known for being short-funded, and your principal can't likely direct you to a back room full of notebook paper and three-prong pocket folders, but Smith says officials will know whom to turn to. And he says you can ask your school to work with the KINF on your behalf.
-- Call the Kids in Need Foundation. The headquarters' phone number is 612-465-0135, and the website is kinf.org. The KINF won't be able to directly send you supplies, but it will be able to work with your school or send you in the right direction so you can get what your child needs.
However you handle it, you may feel alone, but there are plenty of parents who can't afford school supplies. Smith says his offices are besieged by multiple phone calls daily throughout August. He recalls one he received about a week ago from a mother whose husband had been severely injured in a car wreck and wasn't expected to be working for another six or seven months. The mother said that there was no way they could afford school supplies.
"She happened to be in a city where we had a resource center, so I'm fairly sure they worked with her kids' classroom teachers to get the supplies," Smith says.
[See: How to Live on $13,000 a Year.]
And he says that he sees the benefits of kids having school supplies whenever he is on hand to pass them out.
"A few months ago, we were in a school in Chicago passing out backpacks in a classroom. The supplies were inside them," Smith says. "And a second- or third-grade girl looked up at me and smiled and said, 'Now I can enjoy school.' Talk about a lump in the throat."
If you have money for school supplies but are struggling. If you feel you don't need to reach out and ask for free school supplies, but you definitely need to find them on the cheap, there are a number of outlets to consider.
Courtney Jespersen, U.S. News My Money blogger and retail and shopping content writer at the financial website NerdWallet.com, suggests the following:
-- Consignment stores. She cites Swap.com as being a particularly good online consignment store. "The site's back-to-school department is filled with kids' apparel that costs less than $5 per item in some cases," she says.
-- Dollar stores. She adds that there's always Wal-Mart.
-- Buy used. Don't worry. Jespersen doesn't suggest you buy used pencils and crayons. She is thinking this could be a good plan for backpacks or laptops. "Reputable online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, where sellers list used or refurbished items for resale," she says.
If you have money for school supplies but simply want a good deal. Coupons are easy to forget about if you're doing last-minute school shopping, so try to remember them. If you shop online, plenty of coupon websites feature pages dedicated to back-to-school shopping (i.e., RetailMeNot.com), and you may want to utilize cash-back rebate sites like Ebates.com and ShopatHome.com.
Getting into the habit of searching for deals on school supplies isn't a bad idea in any case. After all, you may be stocking up on notebooks, pencils, erasers and binders now, but as Smith says, "It isn't as if kids only need school supplies just in August and September. It's an ongoing expense. Even if kids get a lot of school supplies at the start of the year, they're going to run out of them."
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