Well, back to school is upon us. School supply shopping is in full force and if you're anything like me, you are frustrated. I spend several hours, and made several stops to find a blue, 5 subject, wide ruled notebook and ended up with no success. Thank you Amazon for saving me, but no thank you for costing $4.99 instead of $1.00.

The rest of my school supply shopping I did on Walmart Grocery Pick-Up. I'm a genius! I let someone else decipher between regular and washable markers and stumble between broad tip and fine tip Sharpies.

Several hundred dollars later, I got to wondering what the average expenditure was for Back to School? Was I average? Why does it seem so Expensive?

Metro Kids says $26.5 billion will be spent on K-12 Back to School supplies this year. That number is up 5% from last year. On average that is just about $670 per child. It is broken down into 4 categories: school supplies, clothes, shoes, and electronics.  The electronics category is largely for high school students although both of my elementary students had headphones on their lists and my middle school daughter needs an expensive graphing calculator.

If you're feeling frustrated about the time and money spent on this "scavenger hunt", keep the teachers in mind. Teachers spent $1.6 Billion, yes, with a "B" Billion dollars of their own money on supplies for their students and classrooms last year. The generosity of teachers never ceases to amaze me.

One more thought. Students in Minnesota are required to attend 165 days of school each year. If you take the $670 spent and divide it by 165 it comes out to jut $4.06 a day for your child's education. In my opinion, that is money well spent.

I'm looking forward, with great anticipation, to Sept. 3rd when my 3 girls return to school. "What am I going to do?", you ask. "Anything I want!", I answer.

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