All parents know the struggle of affording their kids’ back-to-school cost. But one mom says things are so expensive this year that she can’t even afford to feed her family.
Chloe Adomaitis, a 27-year old single mother of six from the UK, admitted that she’s had to cut back on her grocery shopping in order to afford her children’s’ school uniforms, The Sun reports. The stressed mother has to spend £200 on the uniforms, which works out to be roughly $240 USD. "It affects everything, holidays, buying healthy food. It is so expensive, but I do the best I can for my kids," she explained.
The mother anticipates her budget is only going to get tighter as four of her kids transition to secondary school in the next two years, which has a different uniform. "When you have to buy the ones that are labelled when they get to secondary school and they have to be exactly right, you can't have certain shoes and the blazers run out so quickly, that’s tough," she explained, adding she fears the cost will “break the bank.”
Chloe continued, "You’re looking at least £200-£300 worth of school gear and that’s one or two pairs each. You have to plan it out and make sure you don’t spend it all in one go."
Earlier this month, we reported that over 70% of parents are worried about how they’ll afford their children’s’ back-to-school costs, so Chloe isn’t the only mother worried about her expanding budget. The survey found that parents who are the most stressed-out have kids either going into daycare or college, which often have the highest fees. Another 80% of parents said they would have to compare-shop in order to make their tight budgets work.
But even more worrisome, 40 to 60% of parents say they were concerned they couldn’t afford to buy the basic back-to-school supplies required by schools, including things like backpacks, pencils, and notebooks. As high as 60% of those parents said they were getting stressed just thinking about shopping ahead of their child’s first day of school.
If one thing is for sure, it’s that back-to-school isn’t getting any cheaper. Some tips for making things a bit less harsh on your budget include buying in bulk, using coupons, or waiting for a sale. Many back-to-school supplies will go on sale following the first day of school, so it might be worthwhile to wait to buy most of your child’s gear later into the school season.
If you’re really on a tight budget, head to your local dollar store and see if you can scratch almost everything off of your child’s supplies list. Dollar stores often have a wide selection of back-to-school supplies around this time of year and you can’t beat the prices.