Are Montanan’s Stealing Stuff from the Office for Back-to-School?

Summer has been flying by at breakneck speed.

It's hard to believe that back-to-school is just over a month away for most Montana students. Where has summer gone? It seems like it was just a few weeks ago that we filled up the pool, and now my spouse is already working on our back-to-school shopping list for our kids.

School supplies add up.

Each year, it seems like the shopping list provided by the school gets longer. Notebooks, paper, pencils, dry-erase markers, glue sticks, tissues, hand sanitizer, and rulers are just the starting point. Older kids may require special calculators, headphones, and other tech devices.

It's not just the classroom items.

Every parent wants their child to have nice things, including a new backpack, a fancy water bottle, nice shoes, and trendy, name-brand clothing (I'm looking at you, Lululemon). A Reuters report notes that the average amount parents will spend for each of their K-12 grade kids is a whopping $586 per student.

Stealing supplies from the office?

This tidbit came up on my radio show this morning. I was shocked to learn that an estimated 12% of US parents admit to stealing supplies from the office to help cover some of their kid's back-to-school expenses. Another 5% admitted to dumpster diving for items, per The Daily Gazette article.

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Looking around our office supply closet, there isn't much worth taking.

We have hundreds of boxes of staples (for some reason) a few legal pads, some packs of sticky notes, and a few boxes of copier paper. I'm fairly certain my kids can't use any of that at school.

How are you saving money on back-to-school shopping?

Do you stockpile items throughout the year? Thrift shop? Do you clip online coupons and watch for sales? Some parents are going in on bulk orders of items, and then splitting up the shipment among other parents, a viable option.