Who among us has ever heard – or said! – something like this during the back-to-school shopping season:
“You don’t understand, Mom/Dad – everybody is wearing/carrying [expensive item] this year! Do you want people to laugh at me?”
Back in the day, you just knew that having the right jeans would determine the course of your school year. Having a parent overrule your choices felt devastating – especially if it really did make you the target of your school’s mean girls or rude dudes.
Right now, your kid might be pleading for a new smartphone or a pair of shoes that cost more than the rent on your first apartment. Remembering our own school days is one reason that our kids have a pretty good chance of getting at least some of what they want. (More on that in a minute.)
Another reason? Social media.
Not only are young people checking out their classmates’ social media updates and haul videos, they’re exposed to “an entire army of influencers telling your child what they ‘need’ to have this year,” according to Kelsey Sheehy of the NerdWallet personal finance website.
NerdWallet recently surveyed a couple of thousand parents on the subject. Six in 10 respondents said their kids are influenced by social media; slightly more than that (67 percent) said their children’s friends were major influences.
And just over half (51 percent) of the parents caved to the pressure and splurged. I can’t blame them. Much.
Caving is potentially self-destructive, with regard to family finances, and potentially setting their kids up for Entitled Monsterhood. But it’s also understandable.
You can talk about not giving in to the crowd and staying true to your values all you want. You can tell kiddo that social media influencers might be getting products for free and/or getting paid to recommend a specific brand. None of that matters if you feel you’re the only one in your class wearing store-brand jeans.
Back-to-school shopping: Striking a balance
Does that mean we should pour (high-test) gasoline on this particular consumer fire, i.e., to give them everything they want? Well, no. But your child’s pleading isn’t necessarily entitlement talking, because the stakes really are higher these days.
Maybe you remember how rough peer pressure could be, how having the wrong kind of denim jacket or hair scrunchie could make you the target of snide comments or even organized bullying. During my time at the Anchorage newspaper, I heard about a girl who attempted suicide because a group of well-to-do students relentlessly harassed her about her thrift-store wardrobe.
Some kids prefer thrift stores, because they can create their own styles. My great-nephew is one such: No one can rock leggings, a wraparound skirt, a Marilyn Monroe T-shirt and Dr. Martens the way my non-binary buddy does. The kid has always been a stylista.
And for those who want their clothing with zero history? Approach the situation with equal parts empathy and realism.
Dearest son/daughter: I know you want to look amazing and feel confident by wearing and owning certain things. But I cannot and will not risk the family finances so that you can have every little thing your heart desires. Instead, let’s get creative.
Some examples of that creativity:
Give kiddo a budget
If you think your son or daughter can handle it, propose this deal:
“I planned to spend X dollars total on your school clothing. Make a list of the things you need right now, including underwear and socks and shoes, and look up the cost of all the other clothes you want to buy. Once we’ve gone over the list together, and you’ve determined what you’re willing to do without so that you can have certain items, I will give you the money to buy those things.
“Stop jumping up and down with excitement, and listen to me: There will be no bailouts. So if you don’t have any slacks that fit and you spend all your money on other stuff, then you’ll be going to school in high-water pants. No bailouts. None. Zip. Zero.”
Then write up a contract:
“I, KidName, agree that I will be given X dollars to buy all my school clothes for 2019-20 school year. I acknowledge fully that no more funds will be given, and that it is up to me to make careful choices with this cash.
“I further acknowledge that this contract will be waved in my face if I come back to my parents to say that I need more money because I spent unwisely. The word ‘consequences!’ may also be used at that time. Also, I should not even bother calling my grandparents for help, because they know about this agreement and have agreed to let me suffer.”
(Kids have growth spurts, of course, so factor that in; for example, if you figured you’d be buying more slacks or shoes in January, keep back part of the cash until then.)
Suppose your son or daughter spends far too much of the school clothing budget on something frivolous and absolutely does need new jeans? Make kiddo pay for them from allowance funds (if any), babysitting or some other side hustle, or doing extra chores (lots of extra chores) for pay.
If the need is severe enough that you must advance enough allowance to buy the item right away? Charge interest – say, 16.46 percent, which was the average APR in the third quarter of 2018 for credit cards, according to the Federal Reserve.
(What’s that? You don’t like paying interest? O sweet summer child, consider this an object lesson in budgeting. Yes, we really are mean. When you’re a parent, you can be mean.)
Stretch those back-to-school shopping bucks
Look for the best prices whether you’re doing the shopping yourself or giving your offspring a budget. For example, you could:
Use coupons and deals from sites like Savings.com, Retail Me Not or Honey.
Download store apps, because additional or special deals could be sent your way.
Compare prices with browser extensions like Invisible Hand or sites like Pricegrabber.com.
Use cash-back shopping sites to access your chosen stores. Three of my favorites are Mr. Rebates, Dollar Dig and Rakuten (formerly Ebates).
Pay with discounted gift cards. You might save as little as 2 percent, but you might also save a lot more. And hey, I’ll take 2 percent!
Shop yard sales and thrift stores. You might find nothing. You might find some pretty spectacular stuff. And speaking of thrift stores…
Find thrifty influencers
Obviously not all thrift stores are created equal! But you can find some terrific vintage stuff as well as relatively new items that someone got tired of and donated.
Or maybe never wore before donating, since some of these finds still have the original store price tags.
Kid unsure how to rock la segunda chic? Check out Pinterest, YouTube or Instagram to see how fashionistas (some of whom are apparently still in middle school) turn cheap finds into stylin’ looks.
(Note: Some of the vloggers on YouTube swear as freely as they breathe. You’ve been warned.)
Consider advance gifting
If relatives or close friends typically ask what to get the kid for birthdays or holidays, confer with about giving those presents early.
Maybe your kid turns 13 in November and his godmother would be willing to buy those super-special sports shoes (say that five times fast) right now. Or perhaps the grandparents would give kiddo the money they’d planned to spend at Christmas in time for back-to-school shopping.
Should this be agreed upon, make up another one of those contracts. Seeing a black-and-white declaration that “I, KidName, agree that this [expensive whatever-it-is] will be the only birthday gift I get from Doting Aunt next year” might goose kiddo into thinking, really thinking, about whether that particular item is totally worth it.
Now: Will any of these be easy? Probably not. It’s hard to see our kids so upset, especially given our own flashbacks from our own days of “Donna has only like five shirts total, have you noticed???”
But giving our children everything they ask for sets them up for rough sledding later on. The “see it, want it, buy it” mentality could completely wreck their budgets once they’re out on their own. The mistakes we make when we’re young can take a long, long time to recover from – and the opportunity cost is pretty grim, especially if you have student loans and a starter salary to go along with those credit card bills.
Readers: Are you dealing with the back-to-school shopping blues? How do you find balance?
Love, love, love this post! I wish I had had it when I was buying back to school clothes for my now 50-something, 40-something and 30-something adult kids. In the country of my heart, the Dominican Republic, they do NOT have this problem. All schools, both public and private require the kiddos to wear uniforms.
Back when my now 41 year old son was in high school, I bought his required white shirts and other school clothing at thrift stores so the items sometimes had the name of the previous owner written inside. He came home the first day of the school year and told me that the girl sitting behind him had recognized the name on the label of his shirt and haughtily said,” You are wearing my brother’s shirt!” Seeing the same name on the inside of his gym shoes sitting on his desk, she smirked,And those are his shoes, too!”
I asked him what happened next and was so proud when he told me how he had answered her,”Well, evidently your mother doesn’t care for the earth like my mother does!”
Niiiice.
I know uniforms are not popular but I wore them through the 12th grade. There was an extreme income disparity in the school, as about 50% were immigrants or children of immigrants, from Eastern Europe. Kids would throw rocks at us and yell, Go home, DP!! (For displace person. My parents set in a camp in Germany before being given permission to enter, even after both of them spent their adolescence in several Nazi work/extermination camps.) The uniforms made it much harder to sneer at poorer kids and the nuns every year asked parents whose kids had outgrown their uniforms to give them to the convent so they could be redistributed to those of us who had pretty much nothing.
Sorry your family was treated so poorly for the crime of escaping Hitler. Sheesh.
I like the idea of recycling the uniforms. Some public schools are adopting uniform-ish behavior, e.g., “khaki or dark blue or black slacks, white or navy blue or red shirts.” Obviously the rich kids are gonna have the designer pants and shirts, but it’s a lot easier for parents to shop for school clothes that way. No glitter, no glam, no T-shirts with naughty slogans: Follow the school’s dress code.
This is why I shop at Savers, it’s a secondhand thrift store and I love it, because I can get clothes for my son who’s going into first grade and get shirts with all the character logos he likes for cheap and he knows it doesn’t cost as much as in the bigger stores. 🙂
The local version of Savers is called “Value Village.” I shop at the Savers in Phoenix when visiting my daughter because every Monday is half-price day and there’s also a weekly seniors day. You can find some amazing grownup clothes, too, if you’re lucky and/or patient — and of course the books section is a great place to buy birthday and holiday gifts.
Great post, Donna, and it brings a couple stories to mind…
One of our friends tells the story of how when her now-adult son started high school, he desperately wanted a particular pair of expensive jeans. She let him decide how to spend his back-to-school clothing money, and sure enough, he chose the expensive jeans—and he ended up doing laundry almost every night, as that was his only pair of school pants. But as I heard it, he accepted this as the consequence of his decision and was still glad to have chosen the jeans.
When MrH started high school in the 1970s, his newly-divorced mother couldn’t afford the fancy clothes he wanted. So she scraped up some money and gave him…sewing lessons. So not only did he have the kind of clothes he wanted, they were made to measure, and he’s been sewing ever since. Wise woman!
Sewing is a great skill to have. Wise woman indeed!
We grew up on yard sale, hand me downs, and handsewn clothes. I didn’t shop in a store for clothes until I was 12 and it was a miserable experience because nothing fit me, so I never really learned that whole schtick of buying any sort of clothes to fit in with a crowd. I was lucky if I fit my clothes!
With JB, we keep zir in hand me downs primarily, new clothes are only gifts from relatives, but I know we’re running out of time to live in just hand me downs. When the time comes, though, I’m going to have a hard time mustering much empathy for any desire for designer brands 😀