Personal Finance Coach: How to minimize expenses, avoid debt, and maintain your sanity while back-to-school shopping
TrustPlus Coach Sabrina Alexander shares the expert guidance she offers clients and follows herself to navigate the annual ritual for parents with school-age children.
By Sabrina Alexander
Back-to-school shopping isn’t yet top-of-mind for most of my clients as they navigate inflation, at a 40-year high, especially skyrocketing prices for things like gas and groceries.
But for parents like me with school-age kids, back-to-school costs are coming for us all, including for the $100 graphing calculator my daughter needs for math class, so now is the time to plan accordingly.
Here’s some guidance I offer my clients and incorporate in my own life to minimize expenses, avoid debt, and maintain sanity during the annual ritual that is back-to-school shopping.
Ask and you shall receive, sometimes; Search for back-to-school drives
My daughter is in middle school and needed a $100 graphing calculator for math class. While they will not necessarily volunteer this information, many school districts have a certain number of calculators and other higher-cost products they can provide to eligible students.
If you’re concerned about being able to afford any school-related products, then inquire if the school or district offers financial aid or can provide them to your young Einsteins.
If your school and district can’t help, then your next best option is usually community resources including local nonprofits and businesses that conduct back-to-school drives for everything from pencils, pens, and paper, to backpacks. I help clients research local resources, starting with googling “back-to-school drive” and the town, city, or county, plus the state.
My clients are dealing with a lot in terms of inflation, COVID, you name it, so if I can take one thing off of their list then I’m happy, and so are my clients.
Reuse supplies from last year.
I’ve been scouring our home. You’d be amazed at what you turn up! Some of it can even be useful for our kids going back to school.
Bring lunch from home.
If your young scholars aren’t eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, then having them bring lunch from home can be a way to fuel them with nutritious, cost-effective foods that support their learning and health while protecting our wallets.
Create new looks with existing clothes.
New year, new outfit. Sure, for some of my clients a new year means new clothes. But with many of them, and I do this too, we get creative, handing down outfits from previous years among siblings or freshening up old looks with existing accessories and new combinations of separates. Adding a pop of color with a scarf, earrings, or a bracelet we may already have laying around can do wonders while saving us money.
Open a back-to-school savings account.
I work with many of my clients to open different savings accounts for different goals. This makes it easy to keep track of our progress and prevent commingling of funds between accounts for necessities like food and shelter and for nice-to-have items like a new backpack or outfit for school.
Everybody’s situation is different. The solutions we come up with vary depending on each client’s budget. At the end of the day, we do everything we can to keep our clients from relying on debt which can be a vicious cycle. Sometimes they have to, that’s reality, and we work out a plan to pay the debt and use it as an opportunity to strengthen credit.
