Do you buy the school supply kits through the school?

[Anonymous]

I do. i just priced out everything on the list to target and the prices were actually more on target. Sure i could shop sales but I don't have the time or energy for that.

[Anonymous]

I can afford $55 so I use the school kit.

[Anonymous]

Our school kids are a ripoff. Ours are not a moneymaker for the school, but the purchased kits finance "freebies" for the FARMS students. All of our supplies are pooled anyway, so I'd rather buy a few extra packs of pencils, markers and scissors when we hit the back to school sales at Walmart and Target.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our school kids are a ripoff. Ours are not a moneymaker for the school, but the purchased kits finance "freebies" for the FARMS students. All of our supplies are pooled anyway, so I'd rather buy a few extra packs of pencils, markers and scissors when we hit the back to school sales at Walmart and Target.

I posted above that out kits are the same as what I would pay at Target, not shopping for specific sales. Ours also include "freebies" too and are also pooled, but I don't mind. We're doing fine financially and have been lucky in life; the $100 I spend on school supplies for my 2 kids and the kids in their class who can't afford them isn't going to break the bank.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our school doesn't actually make any money off of them - it's a pass-through item on our budget. We actually end up shelling out for kits for some of the kids whose parents can't afford it, so it's a good way to make sure all kids have the same supplies.

I miss shopping for school supplies, though! We usually do a backpack program where we buy supplies for a less-well-off kid in a DC school so we can have the fun of buying cute folders and pencil boxes and fun little extras.

We do the same here... I love school supplies and shopping so I get the joy of shopping along with the satisfaction of doing a good thing by buying for a school our church adopted, but the kits ensure my kids have the right stuff for their school year without any stress on my end.

[Anonymous]

I go to Target once, in July, when everything is in stock and nothing is on sale and it's STILL $10 less per kid than the kits. But that's not why I do it. My kids like to pick their pencil bags and composition books and other items where the color is not specified. (I have 2 girls, who are easy to take shopping, and I SAH. I can understand why others would do the kits but we look forward to it.)

[Anonymous]

I would do the kit because the list would come out really late; sometimes each teacher had a different list, and you wouldn't know till you got homeroom assignments that you needed a college-ruled-graph-composition book or green ballpoint pens, then you're store hopping with empty shelves or on amazon ...

[Anonymous]

Yes. Best thing ever.

[Anonymous]

No. They are way overpriced and I love back to school shopping.

[Anonymous]

I HATE HATE HATE shopping (you people who love to shop reaally baffle me). It's a great time saver. I don't care to rummage through and price shop to save a few bucks on something as trivial as school supplies. Im sure I'd feel difderent if we were hard up.

[Anonymous]

We always shopped for them ourselves and found we spent about half of the kits cost. At first, I'd beat myself up over not being able to find a certain brand eraser or something, only to find out that a substitute brand was fine - the other brand was just their preferred.

Like another PP above, I was a SAHM and I have 2 girls who like school supply shopping, so it was a fun outing day for us, especially at the end of summer when we were running out of things to do. But I understand why others might prefer the kits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I HATE HATE HATE shopping (you people who love to shop reaally baffle me). It's a great time saver. I don't care to rummage through and price shop to save a few bucks on something as trivial as school supplies. Im sure I'd feel difderent if we were hard up.

Same here. My time is worth more than the <$20 I might save if I were to shop sales and buy the items myself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is like school pictures. They are expensive, but they are a fundraiser and convenient.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our school kids are a ripoff. Ours are not a moneymaker for the school, but the purchased kits finance "freebies" for the FARMS students. All of our supplies are pooled anyway, so I'd rather buy a few extra packs of pencils, markers and scissors when we hit the back to school sales at Walmart and Target.

Isn't that a good thing for your community?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I did last year for convenience and because it's a fundraiser for the school.
But then in August the school sent a list of additional items needed that weren't in the pre-ordered box.
So I had to run out and buy those anyway.
Because of that, I may skip it this year. You're right that the school boxes are more expensive than buying on your own.

I used to think that but then I asked and found out the school gets nothing from it. They just do it for the convenience of the parents. I am mixed on the idea. It is a convenience, but my kids have used a lot of their stuff from year to year (how many rounded scissors do I need?). We often re-use the composition notebooks b/c they only used 20 pages of it. I can't throw those out or just send them to recycling... we "re-use" before we recycle. So, I generally don't buy the kits anymore... but nothing wrong with buying them and doing it that way.