Is it me or does it seem as if back-to-school shopping is starting earlier and earlier each year? You can feel the heat and humidity in the air, but yet you can’t avoid seeing signs in store windows of kids with backpacks in sweaters and jeans.
Each year as we approach the busy back-to-school shopping season I think back to when I was a kid and how excited I was to go clothes shopping with my mom and school supplies shopping with my dad.
The smell of an office/school supplies store always hits me and takes me right back to a very special time and place. New notebooks, folders, book covers and pencils. All in brand new, perfect shape.
Fast forward to today and as a parent it seems as if my schedule is so much busier than my parents’ ever was. In fact, it seems as if schools are starting to understand these busy schedules by giving parents an option to order all their child’s supplies online. The day my son walks into school this year, his school supplies will be waiting for him at his desk.
Convenient? Absolutely. But, at the same time there is something about back-to-school shopping which makes going to the store memorable.
Just behind the holiday shopping season, back-to-school shopping is considered to be one of the busiest times of the year for retailers. The National Retail Federation is out with its annual Back-to-School Survey, conducted by Prosper Insights & Anaytics. The average family with children in grades K-12 will spend close to $670 on apparel, shoes, supplies and electronics. That’s up roughly 5% from a year ago.
What’s fascinating to me, in a very positive way, is that millennial high school students are planning to spend $913 million of their own money on school items. Their own money! This tells me that kids not only want to play a bigger role in the all-important back-to-school shopping season, but, are taking on some financial responsibility. Good job, parents!
What better way to begin teaching our kids at a young age about consumer spending than during the back-to-school shopping season? It’s something they can get excited about and at the same time they are playing a key role in something which actually makes up more than two-thirds of economic activity in the United States.
Whether you are hitting the stores or surfing the web for back-to-school shopping; use this time as an opportunity to teach your child the importance of back-to-school shopping for retailers and the overall economy. Tiny consumers make just as big an impact as you and me!
Want to take this lesson further? Give us your email and receive a free download to a story that you can read with your child called “Back-to-School Shopping Fun,” educate yourself even more on how to explain back-to-school shopping and consumer spending to kids and share a fun activity called “Finding Back-to-School Deals.”
