I fought the school supply list… and I WON!!

If you know me well you know I love a good bargain. Well, today the inner cheap-skate in me showed up in full force and the whole family learned a lesson in Economics.

Looking over the “recommended school supply list” from the school district, Kurt and I were thinking about how much money we would end up spending if we were to go to the local office supply store to buy everything on the list. Of course we always end buying other things while we are there – they call those impulse buys, right?

I got to thinking, we buy new school supplies every year – what happens to them all? So I decided to hunt around the house and see what we had left over to try and reduce the amount of things we would need to buy.

I was APPALED at how many pens and pencils I found! Even glue sticks, which I seem to always be out of, we found MORE than enough for what was recommended. We had wide rule notebook paper, erasers, rulers, pencil boxes, pencil pouches, binders, tabs for the binders, headsets, flash drives – you name it, we found it… IN OUR HOUSE!

The final cost for our school supplies this year… FREE!! Woo Hoo! I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. :)

Now I recall my Economics professor in college telling us at least once during every lecture that “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” I admit, there WAS some cost involved in hunting down the supplies at home. My time, they’re not brand new, they aren’t as cute as some of the newer designs, the mess we made in the process that needs to be cleaned up, etc... However, the same college professor also taught us that “Cash is King!”, and for now at least, I am happy to have kept a little extra in my pocket. :)