Finding Cheap School Supplies

The end of summer is upon us and this spells relief to thousands or even millions of parents around the country as their children prepare to go back to school. That relief quickly gives way to horror as they realize that going back to school means a fresh new batch of school supplies. What seems like cheap school supplies quickly add up. Maybe those folders are only a dollar each, but if you need ten for each child, that can quickly become the price of a meal. And that's just one item on a list of school supplies that can be a full page long! Clearly, trying to save money with cheap school supplies is the way to go... but how? Here are a couple of tips to find cheap school supplies.

The first and perhaps best way to find cheap school supplies is to shop around. In years past, this meant driving from store to store or searching through pages and pages of coupons in the Sunday paper. Now it means a couple of Internet searches. Online school supply web sites are plentiful and aggressive in giving you the best deal you can find.

Cheap school supplies are easy to find if you are prepared to pay in bulk. This is particularly effective if you have multiple children. Instead of buying the twenty notebooks that your three children need, why not buy one hundred or two hundred at once? Yes, this will cost a lot of money up front, but over the course of several years, you will use all of those notebooks and you can save a ton of money buy getting them at a bulk rate. Obviously, this only works with certain school supplies, such as notebooks, pencils, and folders, and not with things like clay or scissors.

Finally, the key to cheap school supplies may be in your timing. Obviously, the big chain stores want you to buy your supplies in the month or two before the first day of school. With a little forward thinking, you can get your cheap school supplies two months after school has started for the school year next year. Yes, this requires more planning than the others, but also yields the cheapest school supplies possible.

Cheap school supplies are everywhere if you know where to look. Compare prices online, consider bulk, and try to buy well ahead of time and you could get all of your school supplies on the cheap!