ORLANDO, Fla — As you get ready to send the kids back to school, get your pocketbook ready. A new study suggests parents plan to spend more this year for back-to-school shopping than last year.
It isn’t just inflation driving up spending. Overall, inflation is about 4% year over year, but parents are expecting to spend about 12% more per child this year than last year.
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Backpacks, laptops, pencils and clothes are just some of the items students need to get. It’s the time of year where stores are stocked with back-to-school essentials and other hot items.
Student Alysia Drapiza said, “I would go to like Orlando or like any Super Target and I would start getting all my supplies there.”
Action 9 caught up Drapiza at secondhand fashion store Plato’s Closet in Ocoee, where she was selling some items to get more money to add to her back-to-school budget. With Walmart pushing back prices to 2019 levels on many back-to-school essentials and Target also offering steep discounts that doesn’t necessarily mean parents and students will spend less.
Stephanie Carls with website RetailMeNot said, “Finding a deal isn’t really the concern this time. It’s really that final total, that number that is scaring people.”
RetailMeNot helps shoppers find bargains and discounts. Carls said while not as many supplies are needed with more schoolwork moving online, clothes are expected to be more expensive and that’s where many families will spend.
Clothes are expected to take a bigger bite out of back-to-school shopping budgets this year
Commercial real estate investment group, JLL, a firm that analyzes retail trends found parents plan to spend around $489 per child. That’s an 11.7% increase over last year’s $437, but that doesn’t mean families are simply splurging. The JLL survey of more than a thousand parents found this year they plan to put a larger share of their budget to essentials like school-list supplies and needed replacement clothes and shoes.
“All these prices going so sky high, but certain places you can go and get them cheaper than other places,” Alysia’s grandmother, Debra Drapiza told Consumer Investigator Jeff Deal. She said they look to save where they can.
That tracks with what JLL found. Nearly every parent surveyed planned to use at least one cost-saving strategy, whether that’s sales or coupons, comparison shopping, reusing supplies or buying secondhand. That is up from 92% of parents who said that last year. But even with the efforts to save money this year, they still expect to spend more.
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Debra Drapiza said, “Oh yeah, you got to watch your pennies coming up to go shopping. I mean it’s very hard.”
The difference between last year and this year comes to spending just over $50 more per child. 80% surveyed said they planned to go to Walmart, mostly because they could get much of their list in one place.
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