Many children have already started returning to school around the country. Trae Bodge, smart shopping expert, joined Cheddar News to provide tips on when and where you can find the best deals to save some money for you and your family.

<div class="block">Many children have already started returning to school around the country. Trae Bodge, smart shopping expert, joined Cheddar News to provide tips on when and where you can find the best deals to save some money for you and your family.</div>

Need2Know Headlines

How to Get the Best Back-to-School Deals

Well, kids are returning to the classroom and today our series need to know back to school is helping you with your family's shopping plan of attack. How do you get what you need for the cheapest prices? What's worth investing in? Where can you skip to help us out here? Smart shopping expert, Rey bore. Great to see you as always. Same to you. So when is the best time to do your back to school shopping? Should you start in June? Well, great question. According to the National Retail Federation, many people started much earlier like in June, I never suggest that people do that just because the sales aren't really happening then right now is the sweet spot. It's a great time to shop for back to school because this is when the retailers are really looking to move that merchandise and are pricing it accordingly. So where should you go for the things you need? Or our kids need pencils, notebooks, et cetera. Yeah. So there's so many options. So, Amazon is a great resource. If you like to shop online, then of course your office supply stores like your office Depot, staples big box stores. Like Target Walmart and then don't forget buying in bulk, like your Costco bjs and your dollar stores. Like Dollar General. All of these stores together can present a great opportunity for saving and shopping for back to school. What about those tax holidays? When are those available? Yes. So they differ in every state and just don't forget that there may be a state right next to you. That's having one and they all have different rules. So some are kind of wide open and you can buy whatever and it's tax free, some have monetary balances like you have to spend $100 or less in certain categories. So familiarize yourself with the rules and then take advantage of those tax free days. Are there any other places? You should suggest that parents maybe don't think of when it comes to back to school shopping? I mean, I would say your neighborhood pharmacy, like if you go to say a CV S pharmacy and you sign up for their loyalty program, you can earn 2% extra bucks for almost every purchase, plus they have lots of amazing deals. You can earn points and get personalized alerts for sales. And that's a good point in general, make sure to sign up for the loyalty programs of all the retailers that you shop with. So you can take advantage of those personalized sales and earn points towards future for purchases. What about those parents who are just busy and they kind of want to one stop shopping kind of place, they want to get it all done. What options do they have? That's a great question. A lot of us are really pressed for time. And so I am seeing a number of retailers offering bundles for back to school like Amazon has this for sure. Target has it. So if you don't have the time and you want to just get it all at once, you can do that, it's a little bit trickier to save when you do that. So this is really like a time versus money equation. I love that. It's a great analogy. What if you have an only child? Are there ways to share the in with maybe other families? Yeah. So I have an only child and I know you do too. So you don't wanna necessarily go to Sam's Club B J's Costco. In that case, unless you want to split with another family, you can do your Costco run and then share the spoils. That's what I would recommend doing or you know, you can always store everything away in the basement for next year. I have kind of a whole store in my basement of of back to school things for my daughter. Any other thing that viewers should know about when it comes to back to school? The last thing I would say is buy used especially for clothing and also technology clothing in particular though if you have a teen or Tween like we have, sometimes kids don't want to buy used. There's maybe a stigma to that. But if you show them how much more they can get by buying gently used clothing, then they'll maybe understand that your budget will go really far if you do that and the gently used clothing now it's so nice. You can't even tell it's used. Well, always great advice. Thank you so much.