Last August I spent $312 getting two kids ready for school. This year my target is $160, and no, I’m not sending anyone in with last year’s chewed-up pencils. The thing that quietly drains the budget isn’t the glue sticks. It’s the stuff I buy twice, once because the teacher’s list says so, and once a week later because I forgot we already had a drawer full of it.
I’ve run this back-to-school gauntlet six years straight. Some years I did fine. One year I walked out of Target with $90 of “extras” nobody asked for. So I’ve had time to figure out what actually moves the number, and it isn’t clipping a coupon for 30-cent folders.
The short version: shop your own house first, time the big stuff, and skip the urge to finish it all in one trip.
Raid your own closets before you buy a thing
Before I write a single item on the list, I dump out last year’s backpacks onto the kitchen table. Last summer that turned up 40-some pencils, three unopened glue sticks, a barely-used pack of markers, and a calculator I’d convinced myself we needed to rebuy. That one find alone was $14 I didn’t spend.
Schools usually post next year’s supply lists by mid-July. If yours hasn’t, call the front office and ask when it goes up. Then walk the house with that list in hand: junk drawers, the bottom of closets, that bin of art supplies nobody touches. Cross off everything you already own. You’ll be surprised how short the real list gets.
This is also when I check the backpacks and lunchboxes for one more year of life. A backpack with a working zipper and no holes is a backpack, full stop. My son used the same one for three years and only swapped it because he wanted a different color, which is a want, not a need.
Time the expensive stuff, and don’t worship the tax-free weekend
Here’s where I’ll push back on the most-repeated advice out there. Every article tells you to do all your shopping during your state’s tax-free weekend. Around 18 states run one in late July or early August, and yes, skipping sales tax saves you something. But that “something” is usually 6 to 7 percent. A 20-percent-off back-to-school sale beats the tax break every single time, and stores know the holiday brings crowds, so they don’t always discount hard that weekend.
So I treat tax-free weekend as the moment to buy big-ticket, high-tax items, a laptop, a graphing calculator, sneakers, where 7 percent of $400 is real money. For $4 packs of notebooks, I just wait for the actual sale, which usually shows up in the weekly ads anyway. If you want the deeper version of this thinking, I laid it out in the best times of year to buy almost anything.
Split it into two trips instead of one big haul
The single-haul shop is how the budget blows up. You’re already there, the cart’s half full, and suddenly a $25 character backpack feels reasonable. Tired brain, full cart, bad math.
I spread the buying across two or three weeks and let the weekly ads tell me when to move. Consumables like pencils, folders, tissues, and glue I grab at Dollar Tree or during a loss-leader sale where they’re practically giving them away. One week notebooks are 50 cents at one store; the next week it’s pencils somewhere else. I pick up only what’s on sale that week and leave the rest.
A couple of cashback apps cover the things I’d buy anyway. I’m not chasing pennies, but a few dollars back on a $60 clothing order adds up over a season. I keep my honest take on which ones are worth it in the best cashback apps for 2026.
Where parents actually overspend
It’s almost never the supplies. It’s clothes, shoes, and electronics.
Clothes: kids grow. Buying a full fall wardrobe in August means half of it won’t fit by October. I buy a week’s worth of outfits now and fill in once the weather actually turns. Hand-me-downs and a neighborhood swap cover more than my pride used to let me admit.
Shoes and backpacks: this is where I’ll happily spend more. A $45 pair of sneakers that survives the year beats two $22 pairs that fall apart by Halloween. Spend where the item takes a beating, save where it doesn’t.
Lunches: the disposable juice-box-and-baggie routine quietly costs a fortune. A reusable bottle and a set of containers paid for themselves by September. If packing lunches feels like a chore, the batch ideas in meal prep on a budget work for kid lunches too, not just dinners.
What I’d tell a first-timer
Make the list. Shop your house. Buy big stuff tax-free, small stuff on sale, and never in one panicked trip. That’s it. The fancy hacks matter way less than just not buying things you already own.
Last year my $312 included roughly $80 of stuff we never used and $14 of duplicates. Strip those out and I was basically at this year’s target without trying. The savings were sitting in my own closet the whole time.
So before you head to the store this summer: what’s hiding in your kid’s old backpack right now that you’re about to buy again?