Saving on Back-to-School Clothes

August and September can be expensive months. Between school supplies, backpacks, and a new wardrobe, you end up dropping a lot of money on school-aged children, but this need not be the case. If you’re thrifty and clever, you can find great deals on children’s clothes and get more bang for your buck.

1. Check out thrift stores and consignment sales

The Atlanta area has tons of great thrift stores that cater to kids, including Once Upon a Child and Plato’s Closet. Many of these stores offer great deals on children’s clothing and accessories (such as backpacks and shoes), and you can usually sell back old clothing to get in-store credit or cash. Check the store’s website to see what kind of clothing they are looking to buy. Often, thrift stores will buy what is popular that season. For example, it will be easier to sell of shorts during the summer and sweaters during the winter.

Also keep your eye out for multi-day consignment sales. The sales usually happen in August, September, or October, so save a bit of your clothing budget to see if you can get some good deals at these sales. Consignment sales are also a great opportunity to score cheap Halloween costumes or holiday clothing.

2. Wait to buy

Make a list of the styles and clothing your kids want. Then keep an eye out for sales on their favorite items. Be sure to save some of your clothing budget for these sales, perhaps spending half now and the other half later.

You should also consider asking for kid’s clothes instead of toys for Christmas. Holidays are a great time to share the burden of clothing buying with your relatives.

3. Use coupons on sale or clearance items

Some stores will allow you to combine the discounts:

• Target: You can combine Target coupons with Cartwheel (a Target app) offers and sales.
• JCPenney: Tons of JCPenney coupons allow you to take $10 off a $25 purchase. Combine sale or clearance items to reach the $25 mark then do separate transactions for each pile of $25 worth of clothing.
• Kohl’s: You can combine dollar off coupons, percentage off coupons, and Kohl’s cash back days.
• Old Navy: You can use coupons with clearance items.

4. Go to garage sales.

You can search through Craigslist for upcoming garage sales, and when you find a good one, you can often find higher quality, cheaper clothing. The description on Craigslist might tell you what kind and size of clothing they will have at the garage sale.

5. Save on uniforms

It can be hard to thrift for uniforms, because they’re often made special for the school. To get around this problem, reach out to parents of older children at your school and see if you can buy their old uniforms for a cheaper price. You could also ask the front office if they have old uniforms or lost and found uniforms you could use.

Consider starting a uniform drive at your school if one doesn’t exist. Parents donate old uniforms, then you sell them back to other families at a discount. You could use the funds to finance field trips or other school projects.