How Can I Shop Smart for School Supplies: Essentials vs. Extras?

Hey, listen, back to school supply lists are here and they're long and they're flashy and I'm going to tell you right now, trending gear is tempting, but is it necessary? Today's show I want to talk about shopping smart to get what's needed and save big. Stay with me today. I'm sharing my school supply strategy.That's we're going to cover on today's show.

This is Financially Confident Christian, your daily dose of gospel, grounded insight and faith driven tips to help you break the cycle of financial shame with confidence.

Hello there and welcome back to Financially Confident Christian. I'm Ralph and we're entering our next day of smart money for Back to School and Beyond.This is our new series where we talk about how to save money and get back to school and actually move beyond that. Now, if you missed yesterday's show, we talked about how to budget for Back to School with peace.We laid out the way to do that and today we're going to move on to a big conversation and that's essentials versus extra. I'm going to talk about smart school shopping and how to do it without losing everything in your budget.If you're like me when my kids were younger, you enter the store with this list and like most people, you leave with twice as much as you came in with. Because if you're like my kids, they ask for all the fun extras.I've mentioned this on yesterday's show talking about how my sister and I would do this to my mom. Like I said, I can still remember shaking down my mom when I was younger. And as a parent you want to say yes, that's what we want to do for our kids.You want to give to them. But as we say yes, that total just starts climbing up and in comes the stress.And if we're being honest with ourselves, it often leads to guilt or even budget regret. But here's the thing I want to remind you of. It's real easy to get lost in this.Shopping should be guided by wisdom and it should be guided by stewardship. Let's look at the Bible for just a couple of quick verses. I'm gonna look at the book of Proverbs, chapter 4, verse 7.I'm not even gonna talk the whole scripture, but this is what it says. It says wisdom is supreme. Get understanding. That cuts to the chase, doesn't it?And first Timothy, chapter 6, verses 6 to 8 says, Godliness with contentment is great gain. Having food and clothing, we shall be content.Well, what is this really Saying to us, it's something we need to remind ourselves about and also remind our children about. Needs need to come first and extras. They're okay, but they're okay if they're planned. And this is a great opportunity.Hey, your kids are getting ready to get back into school to start learning. This is a great opportunity to teach your kids discernment.And you could teach it right now because stewardship applies even in the back to school aisle. So now you're saying, Ralph, I am 100% on board with you, but what can we do?Well, here's my solution and this one is going to cut right to the chase. We got to create a needs only shopping list. We got to reuse what we can and stay laser focused. Because here's the truth.Shopping with a plan leads to peace and it leads to savings. So here's your one action step for today. And this one is not going to be very complicated today.Maybe a little bit of negotiating with your kids and might be a little complication. But start by creating a needs only list. We talked about yesterday assembling that school list.I want you to just go through that and highlight only the true necessities. What are the things we absolutely have to have?Because I don't know about you, but when my kids were younger, now my kids are in their 20s now, so we're kind of disconnected from this. There was always a bunch of stuff on there, like, yeah, that'd be nice, you had it, but you don't need it.I think sometimes these teachers in these schools send out this bucket list of stuff they love to have. But what do you really need? So start by that. Create that needs only list. And then the second thing, I kind of mentioned this yesterday.Shop your home first. We often overthink that.Look at the inventory that you already have for supplies, look at the clothes that your children already have, and look at the different tools and technology things they have.Because the truth is, if we're being honest, like I mentioned yesterday with my wife, with buying those durable backpacks, it's a great time to reuse what you already have. You don't have to go out and buy new just because it's a new school year. We gotta go buy new stuff. So second thing, shop your home.And then I'm gonna encourage you to compare prices and use sales. Hey, back to school is no joke. You'll see sales all over the place. Just be careful you don't get sucked into buying stuff you don't need.So look online, look for any Flyers. And listen, here's the thing you gotta guard against. And, and, and the, the online retailers are good about this. Don't buy just because it's on sale.See, you might have that necessity list, you might have that needs list. But you, you're, you're paging through or you're online and you see this other thing.Amazon says, oh, this is a must have, must have maybe, but it's not on your needs list. Maybe it's on your wants list. But just because it's on sale doesn't mean you need to get it. So only buy what's needed.Stick to your guns on that list.Now, here's another thing I'm going to highly recommend, and this is as your kids get a little older, you're not doing this with 3, 4 and 5 year olds starting kindergarten. But involve your kids with setting these boundaries. Let them help you. Maybe you let them pick one small extra item for the back to school season.Maybe. Say, listen, okay, here's the things you absolutely need. Here's some wants you listed. I'm gonna let you pick one of those things.Now, it needs to be within reason and I would venture to say it needs to be something that would actually be useful for them. But this is a great place to start teaching your kids that difference between those wants and those needs.I think that's one of the biggest problems that we have with our children is we don't do a good job of teaching that difference between needs and wants. Because if you're like me, you're that parent that wants to please your kids, you want your kids to have maybe the things that you didn't have.It's so easy to get in that trap of needs versus wants. But this is a great opportunity. This back to school season. They're starting to get in the mind of education again.Start teaching them that difference between the needs and wants and it will be beneficial. That will produce benefits for the rest of their life.And the reason that we're doing all of this, why this helps today, it prevents that budget blowout. It's so easy to blow out your budget when you get to the store and you've just got this massive list.If you haven't really taken the time and invested the time in hammering out what are the needs and what are the ones. And make sure, like I said before, shop your house first. I remember we talked about this on the show a couple of weeks ago.That junk drawer, Remember? Back to school time. My mom was pretty frugal about that stuff.She Would go to the junk drawer and it was amazing how many number two pencils she would pull out and, and half used erasers. And she would say to us, listen kids, you don't need to go buy new stuff. I got it right here.Now, of course we'd hem and hallway, but we need the new pencils, the fancy ones with the red, you know, whatever, you know what I'm talking about. But this will help you prevent that budget blowout. If you have that needs list and this big picture, it's going to reduce that family stress.This is a very stressful time for people. You've sort of gotten to your, your summer off season. You know, everybody's stress level is going to be higher.We're doing different routines every day.Maybe your kids play after school sports or involved and other extracurricular activities and you're trying to juggle around, you know, how do you get this one to here? Another great thing that this does, it's going to build financial confidence not only in your stewardship, but in your kids.Your kids are going to see this as an opportunity to say, hey, mom and dad really taught us a lesson. Remember, back to school time. I can still remember it now. I'm going to be 53 years old in September.And as I prepared for the series, I was thinking about the lessons that I learned from my mom during this time. How she was able to really stretch that dollar.And at the same time, this is going to protect your goals because you really got those, those financial goal set and it's going to meet those real needs. How about we pray together? Father God, we just want to thank you for the opportunity to support our children's education.We realize that it's so important for them to be involved in a good education. And Lord, we have to be honest. We confess that we sometimes overspend or we act without planning, Lord.So I just ask you right now to help us to shop with discernment, Lord, and help us to be intentional in our purchases.We ask that you would teach us to steward wisely and to model contentment for our children, Lord, so that they see what that looks like and they can use that to be profitable in their life. And Lord, we just ask that this school year would be one of peace, one of purpose and one of strong provisions.And we ask this in confidence in Jesus name, Amen. Listen friend, school supply shopping doesn't have to be stressful. Start by focusing on what's needed and shop smart this year.And I'm going to encourage you right now, if you're like other people and you, you got other friends who are going through this, share the show with them. Other people are dealing with the same back to school dilemma and they're trying to figure out how to make all of these things happen.And hey, share this show. Share this series with them. You can send them a text, you can send them an email. Just say, hey, Ralph just started this series about back to school.You can find it@financiallyconfidentchristian.com because, hey, we got to work at this together. We can all build each other up if we share the information we talk about on the show every day.Well, tomorrow we're going to talk about something really practical. We're going to talk about school clothes and school shoes and I'm going to tell you how to save with sales and thrift strategy.So I'm going to encourage you not to miss it. So let's go out there today and be financially confident Christians. You can do this.I truly believe in you, believe in yourself, stay financially savvy, God bless you, and you have a great day today.