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Health & Fitness

Budget Mondays 8/26/2013

Monday – 8/26/2013

Note: I am happy to announce that I have been accepted into a Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) program with a specialization in Strategy & Innovation. Course work begins in October.

It’s Monday – a painful day for most people, yours truly included. Sometimes it is made even more painful as we remember just how much money we ended up spending over the weekend.

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Budget

It’s one word that can make people cringe, angry and sad all at the same time; a rare occurrence indeed. There are plenty of reasons for this – people are told at work that their budgets are being cut, their ideas cannot be funded because they are not in the budget, and in our personal life, our budgets don’t usually quite match up to our desires.

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Many, if not most, colleges have already started classes, and move-in days have occurred, so the back-to-school rush associated with dorm rooms and tablets is mostly concluded. That does mean, however, that the back-to-school rush is over, far from it. Most K-12 and K-8 schools in our area have yet to start classes, and what that means is that there is still a significant amount of back-to-school expense left. Below are a few tips that help to reduce the expense associated with this last push of back-to-school shopping.

-Always make sure to check for price-matching. Many retailers have instituted price-matching policies in order to compete more successfully with online retailers like Amazon and big-box juggernauts like Wal-Mart. Some even allow price adjustments if you can prove that a competitor’s website offers it for less than the physical location you are in. You might be able to return products you already purchased and re-purchase them for less.

-Keep your receipts! It is always prudent to keep receipts for every major purchase, and even though back-to-school shopping happens every year, that does not diminish the impact it can have on your budget. In addition to helping you keep track of exactly how much you ended up spending on back-to-school shopping, receipts also come in handy if you have to return supplies.

-Team up! If you know other people who are going through the same back-to-school shopping process that you are, the following technique might be work for you. Consider buying some of the more common supplies in bulk, and trading with other back-to-school shoppers. This might result in significant savings.

This concludes our back-to-school mini-series of Budget Mondays – time to hit the books!

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