Back-to-school costs mounting

IN just under a week, thousands of children in the Territory will be heading back to school. For the parents, it is a mini spike in the cost to the family budget

IN just under a week, thousands of children in the Territory will be heading back to school. For the parents, it is a mini spike in the cost to the family budget.

New shoes, bags, hats, school uniforms, lunch boxes and secondary supplies like pens, calculators and other more expensive technology including laptops all add up and all have to be paid for.

And then of course, depending on where the children are heading, there are the school fees to be paid.

So it should be no surprise some households are having to turn to buy-now-pay-later schemes to ensure their children receive all the necessary extras to help with a good education.

The Commonwealth Bank back-to-school expenses study compiled using ACA research quizzed more than 1000 parents of children aged five to 17. It revealed Australian families are set to spend $1.7 billion — up 43 per cent on last year — for education necessities.

For a typical family that’s $829 per year.

Technology expenses hit the hip pocket the hardest — 50 per cent of parents will spend more on technology. The cost of technology spending per family is $269.

The research also revealed ways families are offsetting these costs including buying second-hand items (42 per cent) or using hand-me-down clothes (60 per cent) to reduce the financial impact.

Some would argue you can’t put a price on a good education and the true cost comes in not having one at all. But we can never allow education to be unobtainable or so expensive we have to resort to the buy-now-pay-later schemes to achieve them.

In the Territory there are back-to-school vouchers available to students to help offset some of these costs. While it may seem a small amount, given the rising cost, it all helps.