5 Ways to Save on Back to School Shopping

Tips for saving on the back to school spending frenzy

While those men and women "lucky" enough to have spent an entire summer with a house full of kids are undoubtedly eagerly anticipating the start of the school year, there's no denying that back to school shopping can be an incredibly stressful experience. This year, ease the stress on your bank account by taking advantage of these five tips for saving money on school supplies.

1. Go Green and Buy Reusable

Buying reusable items whenever possible can take pressure off the environment and your bottom line. While many school supply products, like pencils and paper, will be of the disposable or single-use variety, make sure to buy re-usable items whenever possible. Instead of stocking up on paper bags, buy lunch boxes or re-usable fabric totes. If you have several children of different ages, try to buy durable clothes with evergreen styling for the oldest child, which can be handed down to younger children in later years.

2. Track Those Coupons

The retail sector fights hard for your dollars at the start of every school year, and they often do so using coupons and coupon codes. With so many options for stores and sites, it can be nearly impossible to keep track of all the best deals without using a coupon tracking site that can help you hunt down coupons by store, product type, and available discount. Plan ahead, do your research, and whenever possible strategize your purchasing decisions according to the best coupon deals you can find.

3. Shop Sales Tax Free

State governments are aware of the huge boost to local economies that comes from the yearly back to school shopping spree, and many of them encourage it by offering tax-free holidays, which suspend the sales tax during specified periods. While some states offer an across-the-board tax suspension, most will tailor the holiday to school-specific items. Visit a tax information site to find out if, when, and how your state is holding a sales tax holiday in the months surrounding the start of the school year.

4. Build a Budget with Your Kids

While every mother may like to think that her children are little angels, that fantasy can face some serious testing when the little tyke is jumping up and down in the shoe section demanding that expensive pair of sneakers. Pull the reins on your children's frivolous desires by making them active participants in the back to school budgeting process. By sitting them down and explaining how much money is allocated for certain products, and why it's important to budget so specifically, you can make a game of it, and encourage them to seek out the best deals on their own. Internet budget sites can even allow you to pre-print an itemized list of your budget and its categories. As an added bonus, making a treasure hunt out of the clothing department is a great way to keep your kids entertained on those seemingly endless shopping trips.

5. Find Discounted Gift Cards Online

The use of gift cards has exploded in the Internet age, so it was fairly inevitable that a secondary market would establish itself. Take advantage of little Timmy's disdain for that GAP Kids gift card by snapping it up from a site like giftcards.com, usually at a discounted price that effectively amounts to free money. As long as you intend to spend the entire amount of the gift card at one time, you can easily avoid any potential fees or other small print pitfalls that can chip away at a gift card's value.