Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Oops, 606 Dollars Per Family

Correction: According to Real Simple magazine, the average family spends 606 dollars on all school supplies: clothing and pencils, and that includes the whole family and not just one child.

I can see how that easily happens, and I know that will be us once all of our boys are in school. I can't even imagine what the cost will be like when I factor in sports fees and physicals etc.

We joke that I will be returning to work once they are all in school just so that we can afford to feed them, but I may have to get a second part-time job just to pay for their school related expenses.

My original post on this topic got a lot of conversation going, so now I am curious if anyone is all done school shopping

3 comments:

Rachel P. said...

I just hit Target last night and was kind of surprised. The things I thought would be expensive weren't all that much and those things I thought would be less than a dollar ended up being much more. What's interesting about this is the wide variety of people with their schooling option with public, charter, private and home schooling all coming into play. When they say the average family in the article, do they mean just families using public schools or did they include everyone with all the options?

Rebekah said...

I would guess tradition school, public or private or charter. I would think that many homeschooling families actually pay even more than 606 with curriculum etc. Then others might spend less. I've seen some blogs of some homeschoolers and I know they spend a ton of money....their "classrooms" are works of teaching material art.

That would be an interesting fact for some group to research.

Rebekah said...

Went school shopping for one child:

Supplies: 18.99 (This includes the 13 dollar lunch box I couldn't refuse....Transformers.

Clothes: 100.00....more than anticipated, but I'm glad I reserved a bit of many every month, so that I didn't faint.....fyi: it is very hard for me to spend money.

In five years we will easily spend 606 dollars for our family. I'm very glad I have boys....they will need to get jobs and buy their own supplies once they are in high school.