Back-to-school parent woes
JOBURG – Your child is blissfully happy for the new school year, but does your pocket mirror their emotions?
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January marks a great and bold new beginning for children as they get to start a whole new chapter, either at a new school or a grade higher. Their energy is palpable and endearing to witness.
As parents though, all of these great and infectious emotions will probably cease to be exciting as soon as you embark on bargain hunting to purchase what you hope to be, a year’s supply of stationery for your little school goers. Though you might not be naive enough to think that by some miraculous chance stationery supplies have suddenly dropped in price to barely nothing, you still get quiet a shock looking at the prices for some these items.
Taking into account that you would most likely have to buy per subject, you would be spending a whole lot more.
To prepare you and ease you into the shock, here is a compiled list of what you are roughly expected to spend at some major retail stores. The following costs take into account all the basic school supplies your child would need. These would be: Pencils, erasers, colouring pencils, oil pastels, pens, rulers, glue sticks, 72 page books, 192 page books, maths sets, a pencil case, book covers, plastic sleeves, quotation files, ring binders, examination pads, flip files, page dividers and highlighters.
You can expect to spend about R1 024.08 at Pick n Pay while CNA will set you back by R1 377.90. Checkers could be seen as the lesser of evils as you could walk away with some change with its total cost coming R 876.19.
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