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SALT LAKE CITY — Parents overwhelmingly — we're talking 73% — are stressed about how they will be able to afford back-to-school shopping this year, according to a new survey from Lending Tree. We are here to help.
The KSL Investigators hit the same five retailers as the past five years, for school supplies: Walmart, Target, Dollar General, Smith's and Amazon.
And we shopped for the same back-to-school list provided by a Utah middle-school teacher — including things like backpacks, and all the writing and erasing goodies our kids need to hit the ground running when the school bell rings on the first day.
Our goal is to put together a little cheat sheet so parents can see where they can save on all these supplies. Most of the stuff seems to be pretty comparable store-to-store. But, like we do every year, we found certain pricing outliers.
At Smith's, where we've never found a reusable water bottle for even close to what we've paid at other stores, this year is no exception. The bottle at Smith's ran us $12.99, which is more than double what we paid at any other store.
Scientific calculators also proved to have a wide range in pricing. The cheapest we could find on Amazon cost $16.78, more than tripling the $4.97 we paid Walmart for its least expensive calculator we found on the shelves.
Dollar General didn't have scientific calculators. They do sell basic, run-of-the-mill pocket calculators, though. The model they had available was $5.50 — a little over 50 cents more expensive than the scientific calculator purchased down the street at Walmart.
Adding up all the loot, we paid the most to get out the door at Amazon, at $63.01. Smith's was the next highest, at $60.44. Target ranked third in its supply prices, costing us $47.86. At $30, Dollar General was the second lowest-costing marketplace for school supplies; while Walmart took the cheapest honors, at $25.48.
And our years-long experiment also offers some promising news regarding inflation: Last year, it cost us more to get out the door at every single store.
In 2024, we paid 18.8% less at Target for the same school supplies than last year. At Walmart, we saw a 28.7% drop in prices compared to 2023. In fact, at the two big box stores, we found ourselves basically back to the prices we saw in 2021.
Our annual experiment doesn't factor in stuff like clothes, shoes and athletic equipment, among other gear. Factoring in those costs could explain why LendingTree found two in five shoppers say they expect they'll go in the red because of back-to-shopping this year, with average debt for supplies reaching $793.
