A+ Savings: Smart Back-to-School Shopping Tips

It's that time of year again, back-to-school shopping is in full swing. Many parents dig deep in their pockets to purchase school supplies, new outfits, and the latest tech gadgets for their child(ren).

On this episode of 2 Cents, Drew and Jeff chat about various tips and tricks they found for back-to-school shopping that could save you time, headaches, and money.

Resources:
Honey
College Budget Breakdown (Article)
View in stock products across websites - nowinstock.net
View product price trends - camelcamelcamel.com

Credits:
An AmeriServ Financial, Inc. Production 
Music by SchneckMind, powered by Suno
Hosted by Drew Thomas and Jeffrey Matevish

Thanks for listening! You can find out more about AmeriServ by visiting ameriserv.com. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

DISCLAIMER
This podcast focuses on having valuable conversations on various topics related to banking and financial health. The podcast is grounded in having open conversations with professionals and experts, with the goal of helping to take some of the mystery out of financial and related topics; as learning about financial products and services can help you make more informed financial decisions. Please keep in mind that the information contained within this podcast, and any resources available for download from our website or other resources relating to Bank Chats is not intended, and should not be understood or interpreted to be, financial advice. The hosts, guests, and production staff of Bank Chats expressly recommend that you seek advice from a trusted financial professional before making financial decisions. The hosts of Bank Chats are not attorneys, accountants, or financial advisors, and the program is simply intended as one source of information. The podcast is not a substitute for a financial professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. AmeriServ Presents: Bank Chats is produced and distributed by AmeriServ Financial, Incorporated.

Transcript

Drew Thomas: 0:23

Okay, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna, just gonna say this. I don't typically consider myself to be a vain person, okay? I'm not usually overly, you know, affected by my appearance, per se, okay? But Jeff, who is, of course, not only the co-host, but the executive producer, insisted on having, you know, content available for whenever this episode was...

Jeff Matevish: 0:46

Makes my job easier. Yeah.

Drew Thomas: 0:48

Yeah. And so, he's making me do this on a day that, literally the, the afternoon before I'm supposed to go get a haircut.

Jeff Matevish: 0:54

I apologize. I didn't know that you could have said something.

Drew Thomas: 0:58

No, no, no. So, I just, I just want to apologize to all of the viewers that are looking at my giant fro here that, that, yeah, that's the reason, Jeff, Jeff is the reason why I do not look my best, on this particular podcast.

Jeff Matevish: 1:12

Not true, not true.

Drew Thomas: 1:12

Jeff, you don't have a haircut problem. I don't. You're just you can handle your haircut. It's not that you don't have because obviously you do have the ability to grow, yeah, you, but you just, you just choose to keep it a little.

Jeff Matevish: 1:24

Yeah, when I, when I get a little bed head, or my, my hair starts poking through like a hat, then I know it's time to shave it off.

Drew Thomas: 1:30

Yeah, yeah, so, now, how long have you, how long you been, have you been sort of just...

Jeff Matevish: 1:34

So, I did the whole barber thing, up until

Drew Thomas: 1:35

Yeah, I did try to cut my hair, and I was not about COVID, and then, you know, it was hard to get a haircut sometimes. So, yeah, my wife started cutting my hair, and, well, I started cutting my hair, and she would touch me up, but. entirely unsuccessful in cutting my own hair. Yeah, during COVID, it was, it was, I have watched barbers cut my hair in the mirror for my entire life, so I just kind of mimicked what they did. It's, it's hard to do the back.

Jeff Matevish: 2:04

Yeah, I would assume. Well, it's a little easier for me. I mean, everything's just one size, yeah.

Drew Thomas: 2:09

Yeah, one, yeah.

Jeff Matevish: 2:11

Exactly.

Drew Thomas: 2:13

Yeah. I don't have that, yeah, but I will say this, I will say that you have an advantage, because I am firm believer that men that, that have a bald head, compared to men that have gray hair, look younger longer. I think like you look at you look at guys like Patrick Stewart, Patrick Stewart is like 90 and he still does not look 90, he's been bald all his life, so you haven't really noticed him age. Yeah, you know, Vin Diesel, guys like that. They're the same way.

Jeff Matevish: 2:42

Yeah but, the, the beard, the gray beard, would give it away, though, you know.

Drew Thomas: 2:45

Yeah, a lot of those guys aren't clean shaven to be fair.

Jeff Matevish: 2:45

Yeah, you don't want to see me without a beard.

Drew Thomas: 2:51

Well, that's yeah, the same here. I have had this goatee since I was in college, and it's because I have a round head. Yeah? So, this makes my head look less round because it sort of focuses your attention toward the middle of my face.

Jeff Matevish: 3:02

Yeah, I started the whole facial hair thing when I worked at McDonald's, and it was, you couldn't have a beard or anything, but you have sideburns. So, I had the biggest mutton chops that I could grow.

Drew Thomas: 3:16

Very nice.

Jeff Matevish: 3:16

And they couldn't say anything.

Drew Thomas: 3:18

And they didn't make you wear, like the chin bib, or whatever they, I've seen people wearing these with beards. They have like that, that chin hair net.

Jeff Matevish: 3:24

Wasn't, wasn't a beard, wasn't a beard, yeah.

Drew Thomas: 3:27

Yeah, that's nice, yeah. When, so when did you work? You worked in college? High school and college? Okay, so, so that was your, I'm guessing you're probably your first job?

Jeff Matevish: 3:37

That was my first job. Yeah, yeah. I worked that for, yeah, almost, oh, I don't know, like nine, nine years, I guess seven, seven years, something like that.

Drew Thomas: 3:44

Oh, wow, yeah. So, you were there a while.

Jeff Matevish: 3:46

Quite, a quite a while. Yeah, yeah, I guess not nine years. I started as I started working as soon as I could start working. And I worked there through college.

Unknown: 3:55

I was 16. I wanted a car. My parents were like, well, you want a car, you better go, you better drive to a job, you know, right, right. But, I mean, that was high school. And, you know, we're gonna actually talk a little bit about high school and school in general. I think today. I can't, yeah, right, all right. So, so no, so what we are going to talk about today is, because it is, it is currently, it is August, yeah. And so, people are going to be going back to school here. And so, we thought, you know, let's talk about how to shop for back-to-school. Now, I was talking to a couple of a, it only took 10 minutes. friends last weekend, and they were telling me they have school age kids, and they said that, like the back-to-school shopping is not as critical as, as it was whenever I was in school. I don't know if that's true or not.

Jeff Matevish: 4:46

I don't know maybe, because people are shopping online more there is not a mad dash to, to your big box store and trying to get the best deal off the shelves anymore maybe?

Unknown: 4:56

Yeah, well, I don't know if it's so much that it was the, the I don't need pens and pencils and paper and things. It was like this, like the clothes shopping. My one friend was like, he's like, you know, oh, we have to go and get you, you know, new shoes and new clothes and stuff. And his daughter was like, why? And I wouldn't have dreamed of going back to school without new sneakers, or I would have just been made fun of endlessly for using my summer sneakers while he went back to school. I mean, that was...

Jeff Matevish: 5:22

I don't know, maybe trends are changing, and last year's clothes are still cool.

Drew Thomas: 5:28

Well, yeah, that's a whole other conversation that we could have. I mean, I don't know.

Jeff Matevish: 5:31

The clothes that I wore when I was in high school are now, like, really popular.

Drew Thomas: 5:35

Yeah, yeah. And, and really there's, there seems to be less of a transition between decades in terms of what's in fashion. When I was in school in the 90s, like high school in the 90s, we would have 80s days, you know, in school, where everybody dressed up like they were in the 80s or the 70s, and that was only 10, or 10, or 20 years prior.

Jeff Matevish: 5:58

That was current day for you, what are you talking about?

Drew Thomas: 6:02

I mean, but that's it, you know, if you tried to dress up like something in the 2000 teens, nobody would notice.

Unknown: 6:08

My sister had JNCO jeans in high school. Yeah, that

Jeff Matevish: 6:08

Yeah. Well, it's all the same stuff, JNCO jeans and, you know, black pants and eyeliner and studded belts and was, that was big, yeah, she could have put her entire body all that kind into one pant leg if she really wanted to, but you know. I went through that, that, that, that Gothic phase. I was, did you, in all black and frosted tips and, yeah, yeah, oh, wow, yeah, I did. It was, it was a short-lived phase, but I went through that phase. Wow.

Drew Thomas: 6:41

Okay, that's interesting. I did not know that about you. You may have to show pictures. I know your wife, I could get, I could get them. So, let's talk about some, some shopping strategies for those that are doing back-to-school shopping. Yeah. So because parents, especially, I think that no matter what you probably are, shopping for your kids in some way, shape or form, either you need new laptops or you need new clothes or you need, you know, for younger kids, more basic stuff like paste and crayons and markers and paper and pens and things like that. So, one of the, one of the, the tips that we were researching was to take your time shopping. Because while you know, you, the first day of school, the first week of school, you get a lot of stuff from teachers that say, oh, we're, you're going to need this, this, this, this, this, this, some of it you may not necessarily need until later in the school year. So, don't feel pressured to buy everything up front if the teacher says, hey, we're going to be doing a big project, but you're not going to need this stuff until November. Right.

Jeff Matevish: 7:50

Yeah, including clothes, that was a big one that I saw, too, get a couple outfits to start the school year off for especially for old, a little bit older students, you know, see what the trends are for the year, you know.

Drew Thomas: 7:57

Oh, yeah, that's a good point.

Jeff Matevish: 7:58

You might have something from last year that you could still use.

Unknown: 8:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And at the same time, you don't want to spend $300 on clothes that your son or daughter comes home and says, everybody made fun of me. I don't, this is the wrong, this is the wrong style, the wrong trend, or something like that.

Jeff Matevish: 8:12

And it just spreads out your budget a little more too. If you can, you know, get a month in and, you know, you didn't have to spend $300 all in one month. You can break it up $150 here, $150 there, yeah.

Drew Thomas: 8:23

Yeah, definitely true. I, and, you know, here's the other secret, you know, you can double dip a little bit and get some, you know, Christmas presents, things like that out of it, you know, yeah, oh, I got your new clothes and stuff, you know, it kind of gets you into the second half of the school year, yeah. Kind of double dip on some of the presents. That's true. Yeah. So, that's another thing you could do. The other thing that says to do is to research student discounts. There are some retailers and brands that will run special promotions for students.

Jeff Matevish: 8:55

I have used that like, Apple was a big one.

Unknown: 8:57

Yeah Apple, Microsoft was big when I was in college. They would give you discounts on Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Office, right. Which, I don't know if that's still a thing now, because isn't Office pretty much a subscription at this point?

Jeff Matevish: 9:10

Yeah, but I think there is a student version.

Drew Thomas: 9:12

Is there still?

Jeff Matevish: 9:13

I think so, yeah.

Unknown: 9:14

You know, I mean, that can definitely be helpful. Here's one that I think we both came up with, and that was tax holidays, taking advantage of state tax holidays.

Jeff Matevish: 9:26

Didn't know this was a thing until today, yes.

Drew Thomas: 9:29

I had, I think the state of Pennsylvania did one many, many years ago. I don't recall when it was and it definitely wasn't recent, yeah, okay, but there are quite a few states that do sales tax holidays, sometimes, sometimes a couple times a year, sometimes once a year. The thing is, you have to keep in mind that based on the state, they may or may not do it for every product or every service, things like that too, so.

Jeff Matevish: 10:01

I saw you can save up to, like, I don't know, one website said, like, 7% usually is, like, the max for that.

Unknown: 10:10

Yeah. I mean, the, the state of Pennsylvania's sales tax is 6% right, but obviously, you know, the State of Pennsylvania doesn't currently do a sales tax holidays. But, yeah, you're right. There are some states that, you know, 7% could be a pretty significant savings for you.

Jeff Matevish: 10:23

Sure, especially if you got a couple hundred, I mean, every, the price of everything's going up. So, yeah,

Drew Thomas: 10:27

Yeah, there's, there are some people that say got a couple $100s, 7% makes a big difference. that the proponents of sales tax holidays suggest that they sometimes encourage out of state consumers to travel for discounts increasing in-state sales. So, that's some of the reasons why they, they try...

Jeff Matevish: 10:46

It's a good thing or a bad thing, yeah.

Drew Thomas: 10:47

Well, yeah, that's what they say. They say that, you know, it says, it says, here it says, because the holidays often apply to lower cost items that wouldn't justify a large detour, they're affecting, attracting out-of-state purchasers is doubtful, and we are obligated to mention that legally speaking, and look, let's be honest, a lot of people don't do this right. But when you're doing your taxes, they ask you, "Did you make any money out of state? Did you make any purchases out of state?" Yeah. Technically speaking, a consumer who makes a sales-tax-free out-of-state purchase that is intended to be consumed in their own state is legally obligated to pay use tax on that purchase at sale, when you, when you file your taxes. So, so you may or may not actually save anything

Jeff Matevish: 11:34

Then you waste all that money on gas to get if you do things by the book, you're still paying tax, yeah. Because if you travel out, out of your own state to buy it, you may not be paying tax in the state that you're purchasing it at that time, but you, you should technically pay tax. there.

Drew Thomas: 11:53

Yeah, I mean, unless you live right across the border, it let's yeah, you know. But, so I did, I did take a look and see, there are some, some, some lists, and I think you have a list too, of some of the taxes, some of the states that do.

Jeff Matevish: 12:06

Yeah, I just had the, it's written down. I had Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and

Drew Thomas: 12:19

And for those of you that didn't catch all that, you can just rewind and listen to it again. That's the beauty West Virginia. of streaming. Yes, I will say this, some of those states that Jeff mentioned, some of them the tax-free holiday has already passed. Like Alabama, for example, their tax-free holiday for 2025 was between July 18th and 20th. Okay, so that one's just last month, but some of them, Arkansas is, or was August 2nd through the 3rd. Connecticut is August 17th through the 23rd so if you're in Connecticut, you could still take advantage of that. Florida is the entire month of August is back-to-school tax-free. And you got to also keep in mind that some of these states limit what is tax-free. So, sometimes it's only on clothes, sometimes it's on everything, sometimes it's on electronics. So, you got to, you know, your mileage may vary.

Jeff Matevish: 13:16

Does that change, I didn't see, does the dates change every year? Or is it like, yeah, okay, not a like, first week in August for, you know, Connecticut.

Drew Thomas: 13:25

For most of these, they say in the article that the, the state legislature usually determines when the tax-free holiday will be at some point early in the year. And then they set it. So, sometimes there's a recurring thing and sometimes not, okay, so fair enough. But so again, that's one of those things where, yeah, it might be a good, it might be it might be worthwhile to you, it might not. So, yeah, so, okay, so tax-holidays. What else we got? Shop major sales this summer. Again, too late.

Jeff Matevish: 14:01

But you can, I mean, if you get a newspaper, you can still look and see what's on sale for the flyers every week. You know, you might, it may not be as big as sales as those major sales, but yeah, you can still find some sales.

Unknown: 14:11

Yeah, and we were talking a little bit too about, we'll just say, like, Prime Day and things like, I have noticed that Amazon's Prime Day has spurred a cavalcade, there's your word for the day, boys and girls, of like-minded sales from other retailers. So, every time Prime Day is announced, then all of a sudden, every other major retailer, big box retailer like Target and Walmart, they all come out with sales around the same time.

Jeff Matevish: 14:36

Well, sure they want to benefit, yeah.

Drew Thomas: 14:37

Yeah. So, that didn't always, that didn't happen originally, and then I think they all realized, wow, Prime Day is just like taking it down when it came to, yeah. Do you do Prime Day? Have you looked this year or anything like that?

Jeff Matevish: 14:50

I looked this year, but there wasn't really anything that, a lot of times they'll jack prices up pre-Prime Days. Oh, yeah, yeah. And then you'll, you know, they say, oh, you're getting a, you know, 25% discount. And you don't really get a 25% discount. So, there wasn't anything also needed desperately enough that, you know, that 10% impulse buy was gonna make me buy it.

Drew and Jeff: 15:12

Yeah, that, I mean, well, that goes back to what we said at the very beginning, like, shop smart, don't, don't buy it if you don't really need it, right? And, you know, and I would say when it comes to things like school shopping, and so forth, I think that applies to things like notebooks and pencils and pens. I have drawers of pencils and pens at home, yeah, they don't go dry that fast. You don't always need a brand-new box of pens. If you've got pens at home that you can use, right? Right, and a 10% discount on, you know, a $3 pack of pencils not gonna, like, make me buy right this instant.

Unknown: 15:31

Yeah, that 30, I mean, get granted things do add up, but 30 cents on a $3 pack of pencils is not most likely gonna make or break you if you can't buy them right now, you know. But you mentioned something about, about those, those big sales sort of artificially raising the price.

Jeff Matevish: 16:05

Yeah, they tend to do that, yeah.

Drew Thomas: 16:07

And there are apps out there that you can use to help identify those things. And you were talking about, what's the one you said you were using?

Jeff Matevish: 16:13

Honey was one of them. Yeah, that's a big one.

Drew Thomas: 16:14

Yeah, Honey is one of them. There's a some of your credit card providers sometimes will provide different I think there's, I think, I think Capital One has an app that you can, they're basically an extension you can add to your web browser, right?

Jeff Matevish: 16:27

Yeah, there's websites that do it too, just not extensions, but yeah.

Drew Thomas: 16:30

So, you actually go to the website?

Jeff Matevish: 16:32

Yeah. So, you'll go to the website, put the URL in of the product, and it'll go back and pull all the history of the price, and you get a nice graph of showing you know, hey, what your high was, what your low was, and when they were, so.

Unknown: 16:45

Yeah, I did that. This has nothing to do with back-to-school, but I was looking for a fan for my, my kitchen, okay, and I was keeping an eye on it because, again, didn't need it right now. Yeah, sure, but I was keeping an eye on the price. And Honey, I have that extension on my, this is not sponsored by Honey, but I'm just using it as an example. And it showed that, you know, for the last three months, basically it had been, say $80, I don't remember the exact price, but say $80 Yeah. And then the week before prime date went up to$100 and then they dropped it 25% for Prime Day, and they were like, oh, 25% off, it wasn't really 25% off, it was like, $5 off, right? You know, still cheaper, but $5 you know, was really the only price difference, really. But if I didn't have Honey, I wouldn't have known that, sure, yeah, you know. So, I think those apps can be very, very helpful if you know how to use them.

Jeff Matevish: 17:38

There's, there's another app that we didn't, hadn't talked about, not an app, a website, and if I remember the website, I will put it in the description. But there are websites out there too, and I had a friend back at my last job that would use it for video games. But you would put in a product like, say, the product that you're looking for sold out on, you know, whatever website, whatever store. You would put this product into this website, and it would tell you every, every online store that has that product, and whether it's in stock or not. So, you could watch, oh nice, just because that, that product is not in stock at the store that you wanted to buy it from, it might be in stock at a different store. So, you might get a better price. You don't have to go to the big box store and buy something for $5 more if you can get online cheaper at a different website you didn't know about.

Drew Thomas: 18:24

Yeah, yeah, no, that's, that's pretty cool. So, let's see what else, what else do we got? Go shopping with a plan. It says set a budget for back-to-school shopping before you go to the stores, and then figure out how much you can spend for various items on the list. If you have older children, this process can be a valuable personal finance learning opportunity. Kind of, yeah, get them involved in creating the budget for their back-to-school shopping and, yeah, teaching them, hopefully, the value of $1 or $5, which, you know...

Jeff Matevish: 18:57

Prevents impulse buying and all that. Yeah.

Drew Thomas: 18:59

Yeah, absolutely. And it says, compare prices, of course, before you buy as well. So, a few minutes of online searching online can make sure you're getting the best possible deal. You probably also want to look at things I know, personally, I don't know about you. I know that I shop a lot, I don't want to say I don't shop on price, because I think everybody shops on price, yeah, but these days, with as much information is out there for reviews, I also shop a lot based on review. Oh, definitely, yeah, you know, yeah. Because if I find something that is within $5 or $10 of another one, and the review on the first one, even if it's cheaper, is terrible, yeah, review on the more expensive one is better, I might spend a little bit more to get that.

Jeff Matevish: 19:47

That goes into, so I found a good one too. It was the difference between cheap versus value. So, like, products you're gonna be using a lot, like, your backpacks, you know, they're used every day, and they're used hard. You don't necessarily want to get the cheapest backpack, yeah.

Drew Thomas: 20:04

Yeah, I totally get you there.

Jeff Matevish: 20:05

You want to get something that that's going to last, you know, more than the first week of school, yeah.

Unknown: 20:09

Yeah, because really, if you think about it, that's a good example. You know, you don't want to be buying two of it, right? How cheap is it really, if you have to buy it twice? Right, right. You know. So, yeah, you could buy two cheap ones for more than you spend on one good one, in some cases, you know, if the zippers break or the bottom falls out or, I mean, some of these now, so here's the other question, and again, I haven't had kids for a while, like, how, how many books are they really carrying around? Do they still get books in school? Or is everything like on an iPad?

Jeff Matevish: 20:36

Everything's iPads probably, yeah. So, my wife is a teacher, and yeah, a lot of it is on, on iPads and laptops now, Chromebooks, yeah.

Drew Thomas: 20:45

Yeah, I would imagine that colleges are probably hurting a little bit on that, because they used to make bank on books when I was...

Jeff Matevish: 20:54

Did you see they just closed our local college's bookstore for that reason?

Drew Thomas: 21:00

No, really?

Jeff Matevish: 21:00

Over the weekend, yes.

Drew Thomas: 21:02

Like, closed, like, closed, done, done.

Jeff Matevish: 21:04

Yeah, a worker that works in the office next to our old bookstore, yeah, said that there would be weeks where no one would be in that bookstore whatsoever. The only time people would go in is, like, if it was, like, a parent's day, or, you know, the first week of school other than that.

Drew Thomas: 21:22

Yeah, students, students that got, got to class and realize they actually needed the book, yeah, nut didn't buy it, right? Probably showed up that that week, right.

Jeff Matevish: 21:30

And that, you know, that's a good one, too. So, if you're in college, look online. I mean, I bought a lot of my books from Amazon. You have used books, you know, look up the ISBN number and, and get better deals than in bookstores sometimes.

Unknown: 21:44

and you find that the only difference between the 2024 version and the 2025 version is the cover art, yeah, or that they, they swapped chapters six and seven, and just sort of moved them, you know, yeah, six became seven, seven became six, but it's the same content. You know, you can sometimes save some real money.

Jeff Matevish: 22:15

Yeah, but you do have to do that research, because now a lot of these books come with, like, access codes to websites and stuff that are not transferable for like, a used version.

Drew Thomas: 22:24

Good point. Yeah. So, if your professors using the online stuff, which they probably are, I'm sure, yeah.

Jeff Matevish: 22:28

So, yeah, definitely do your research. Yeah.

Drew Thomas: 22:30

Yeah. I mean, for me, back in the day, that wasn't really a thing you just you, and people would...

Jeff Matevish: 22:36

We would get CDs, you know, it would, certain books would come with the, you know, CDs, like, yeah, for computers, yeah.

Drew Thomas: 22:41

Yeah, that's true. And then you would, you know, you walk down the hall and there would be bulletin boards that you could pull a thing off that said, like, use book for sale, or whatever. You'd pull it off and try to get some, try to save. And to be fair, too, I went to, when I went to college anyway, there were professors that said that you had to have a particular book, and it was mostly because the college said that they had to use a textbook. Yeah, and they, you never opened it the entire semester.

Jeff Matevish: 23:08

Some professors would, would be nice and say, you don't really actually need it. I know it's on our syllabus, but.

Drew Thomas: 23:14

Yeah, some professors made you buy their book.

Jeff Matevish: 23:20

Yes, you're right.

Drew Thomas: 23:23

Which was a convenient way of driving up their particular sales, right, right, which I always thought was kind of funny. So, okay, so what else do we got? We kind of talked about spreading out your shopping. We'll kind of skip over that. Oh, consider buying refurbished electronics. That's another one. You don't always necessarily need to have a brand-new laptop. If you can find a good deal on a refurb at your local big box store or online, a lot of times the if, especially if it says factory reconditioned on it, something like that, there's a pretty good chance you're going to get a piece of electronics that works just fine, yeah, without necessarily having to pay top dollar.

Jeff Matevish: 24:02

Yeah, and it's not like, you know, 5-10, years ago, where you had to go on Craigslist to buy a used Apple computer. Now, a lot, because of the price of everything's going up, there are a lot of websites out there that solely sell recondition products.

Unknown: 24:16

Yeah. And, and if you do like to shop in-person, a lot of electronic stores will have open box, yeah, sitting around display models, particularly as model numbers change and model years change, you can find some good stuff as their stores are switching over their displays. So, if they had a laptop that was on display and for people to be able to see how it looked or worked or whatever, and then the new model is coming out, they're just trying to sell the displays off. Sometimes those displays didn't really get a lot of hard use. They were just kind of sitting there for people to kind of monkey around with. As long as the touchscreen displays and stuff aren't, you know, damaged in some way or something you're probably good, yeah. So, that's, that's a different and then, so you also said about, about doing comparison, a lot of price comparisons, right? So.

Jeff Matevish: 25:09

Yeah, see who can price match, too. That was, that was another big one, yeah, that kind of saves you some running around, maybe. You know, if you can get everything at one store, you know, see if, see if that store, or, you know, you need a product from a store that is nowhere near you, see if your, your local store will price match that store.

Drew Thomas: 25:28

Yeah, typically stores will want to see something in writing, so if you see something in a flyer that you get through the mail, or if you're still a folks, if you're still among the people that go get a newspaper and you get coupons, and you see something that's, that's physically advertised. Take it with you to that store, yeah, so that you can prove that the other store is selling the same model. Because I know that a lot of places, and again, you know, if we're talking about things like$3 pens or something, chances are you're, I mean, don't be that guy. You know that's like, hey, you know what? This was$3.98 at this store, and you're selling it for $3.99. Yeah. Like, don't be that, don't be that guy.

Jeff Matevish: 26:05

You could even, but even check, you know, online the store itself, like, I've been to plenty of stores where the online price is different than the in-store price, sure. So, make sure that you're getting the price that you want.

Drew Thomas: 26:18

But typically, when it comes to things like price matching, you're probably looking at larger ticket items like laptops and stuff. Make sure it's the same model number, yeah, which is also harder and harder to be able to determine when it comes to laptops and things. But a lot of stores, they'll say they'll price match, but they'll only price match like model for like model, and if it's a slightly different model, then it may not necessarily do it. So if you have something in writing, okay, that shows the actual item that's on sale, and for what that really helps, okay, yeah, so take that with you when you go to, when you go to, but the other side of it is make sure that you're also keeping an eye on the prices of the things you buy for a certain period of time after you buy them. Because a lot of stores will do 30-day return policies, things like that, and during that time, usually they'll price match their own sales. So, if you buy something now, it goes on sale two weeks from now, you can sometimes get that lower price. Okay, you got to tell them, they're not going to call you.

Jeff Matevish: 27:16

Well, yeah, because then they figure you're going to, you know, bring whatever product back, return it and buy it again for the cheaper rates.

Drew Thomas: 27:21

Exactly. Yeah. So, so a lot of times, if you keep an eye on it, I that happened with me. It wasn't a back-to-school thing, but it happened to me with a washer dryer about 10 years ago. Okay, we bought a washer dryer, and the store that we bought it from put it on sale, like two weeks after we bought it, I saved like, $250 bucks. I just mentioned to them. I'm like, hey, you know what, you guys put this on sale, and we bought it two weeks ago. And they're like, all right, we'll give you the price back. No, so definitely keep an eye on that. And I like

Jeff Matevish: 27:44

Doesn't hurt to ask, I guess, yeah. you said that you, you sort of worked in the, the fast-food sort of industry and things like that. So, but I mean, I when I was in high school and in college, I worked in a big box store that is no longer in business, not my fault, but so I know a lot of these little tricks. Like, you know, yeah, got to, you got to make sure you're, you're playing the game, but if you, but you can easily play the game if you know what to do. Yeah, and, and, because it's no longer my job to keep that from people, I'm gonna tell you. Share your little secrets.

Drew Thomas: 28:16

Yeah, what else did we, did we miss anything?

Jeff Matevish: 28:21

I had a few on mine that I think you didn't have on yours.

Drew Thomas: 28:23

Yeah, absolutely.

Jeff Matevish: 28:24

So, audit what you already have in your house. So, see what you have from last year that is still in good condition. Or if you have kids of various ages, see what, what works, you know, hand-me-down-wise.

Drew Thomas: 28:35

Hey, you know what I mean, in a lot of cases, hand-me-downs are just, you know, the bloom is on the rose in the store, but let's be honest, three days after that backpack goes to school, it's already, yeah, messed up, damaged, torn, whatever. Yeah. So, if there's a little scuff mark or something on a backpack because the older brother or older sister used it, and it's probably still serviceable. Oh, yeah, you know, and you can say some of those backpacks are not cheap.

Jeff Matevish: 29:04

No, they're not. Shop dollar store. A lot of dollar stores will get in a surplus of, like, brand name items, and they'll sell them for$1 or cheap. Sure, you know.

Drew Thomas: 29:20

Yeah, that's how those stores exist. I mean, the, the larger name stores want to have the latest and greatest, and whenever they have excess inventory, they'll sell them off to $1 tree or $1 general or something, and that's where they get their inventory from. And it's perfectly good stuff, it's just, it's just not 2025 or 2024.

Jeff Matevish: 29:39

Yeah, especially you know, stuff like pencils and post it notes, you don't have to get the brand name. The dollar version is probably just as good or close to it.

Drew Thomas: 29:47

Yeah, I don't know how important it is to have a number two pencil anymore. You know, I mean, back...

Jeff Matevish: 29:54

Back in the day, it was Ticonderoga, you had to have a Ticonderoga number two pencil. It was the best, best pencil you could have.

Drew Thomas: 30:00

Yeah, yeah, that and, if you were taking any of

Jeff Matevish: 30:00

That's right. I don't even know if they do those bubble tests, if you were taking a CTS or Scantrons, yeah, any of the Scantron stuff, you had to fill it in. It had to be number two pence. Scantron stuff anymore, yeah.

Drew Thomas: 30:14

I don't know. Now they can probably throw just about anything through an AI related thing, and it'll read it.

Jeff Matevish: 30:20

That's true. Yeah.

Drew Thomas: 30:21

Probably essays are even being graded that way. Now,

Jeff Matevish: 30:24

I'm sure, yeah, well, they use, what is it, who knows? turnitin.com and, I mean, that was a thing when I was getting out of high school where you would have to turn your essays into this website, and it would, oh, really, it would use some AI algorithm to determine whether you plagiarized or not, or

Unknown: 30:39

That's got to be getting more difficult with AI whatever. stuff. I mean, we talked about AI with John a little bit last, what was it our last episode, yeah, but, but, yeah, that's a good point. You know, there's, there's got to be some of that stuff going in. I remember my, my stepdaughter was in college, and she had stuff, and then you could turn stuff in, now, this would have been dangerous for me, because I was always running kind of up to that deadline, you know, and like, she could turn stuff in up until midnight. Okay, yeah, there were times when she would turn things in at 11:56pm.

Jeff Matevish: 31:15

yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas: 31:17

I don't know if I could do that. No. You know, but, but, yeah, she turns stuff in digitally for sure. Oh, yeah, yeah. What else you got? See, download. See, we do a lot of research for you folks. I'm just saying we do. We do, you know.

Jeff Matevish: 31:37

Download the store app. Sometimes store apps will give you some, some perks, like, oh sure, like Target and Walmart apps have perks whenever you are back-to-school shopping. Pro tip, get a Target, so this says Target Red Card., I think now it's called a Target Circle Card. It's not a credit card, but you get 5% off of every single purchase in the store online.

Drew Thomas: 32:04

Oh wow, that's pretty cool. Yeah, I will say, and this might be more applicable to high school students that are of driving age, or college students, but you're right about the apps thing and that, and the apps is not limited to purchasing stuff like back to school, per se, a lot of times, fast food places like McDonald's, Burger King, whatever, you can earn perks and things by using, but they only allow you to do it through the app. Yeah, right. So, if you make your order through the app, as opposed to ordering it at the drive through window, and I think they're trying to do that because it's probably saving them cost in terms of having people working there, which is probably not the greatest thing to, you know, do but, but at the same time they're, I think they're pushing people onto the app that way, and you can earn perks and bonus points. And as a, as a once starving college student, if I could get a free cheeseburger for every three that I bought or something because I ordered it through the app, that would have been great. Yeah, yeah. So, that would have been just fine. I would have been okay with that.

Jeff Matevish: 32:59

Yeah, yeah. Buy in bulk. If you have multiple kids, or you get a group of parents together that, you know, they, everybody needs the same thing, buy in bulk and split the product and split the cost, you might save a couple bucks.

Drew Thomas: 33:14

Yeah, that's a good idea. I mean, if there's a lot of parents that get pretty tight with their kids, especially if their friends, kids' are friends. So, you kind of become friends with your kids parents, you know, for a while there. And so, if, especially if you, you know, families are getting smaller than they used to be. I mean, you don't always have a multiple older siblings to do pass downs to, yeah, that's true. So, if you have, if you're a single child family, and you your, your, your son or daughter is friends with a, another, you know, single child family, that kind of thing, get, you know, team up. Be like, hey, I got a Sam's Club membership, why don't I go out and...

Jeff Matevish: 33:54

Yeah, you know, we all need the same thing. We're all in the same class.

Drew Thomas: 33:56

Yeah, we'll just split the class. Yeah, you know, so and definitely do your kids a favor, and I don't know if they still do this or not, but this or not, but when I was in, especially in elementary school, I don't know about you, okay, they used to give us free tablets at the beginning of school, and they were these gray, most likely, I don't know if they were recycled at the time, but they were these gray tablets with green lines on them, and they were the most useless paper you've ever seen. It was like origami paper. If

Jeff Matevish: 34:25

I don't remember that. you tried to erase something on it, yeah, it would just tear in big holes and stuff, so.

Drew Thomas: 34:31

Oh, they were awful.

Jeff Matevish: 34:32

I'm sure they don't do that anymore.

Drew Thomas: 34:33

Probably don't, yeah. I also remember going down...

Jeff Matevish: 34:37

We, that was what we got, a planner.

Drew Thomas: 34:39

They gave you, like, an actual plan, like a calendar, planner?

Jeff Matevish: 34:42

Yeah, at the beginning, wow, every year, yeah. It had room for notes and stuff, so, man, times have changed.

Drew Thomas: 34:48

That's awesome. Yeah, my, my days of crappy, crappy, gray tablet paper, is where, I guess, gone.

Jeff Matevish: 34:54

And now kids get iPads to take home, you know.

Drew Thomas: 34:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My stepdaughter got, she had a school issued tablet there for a few years toward the end.

Jeff Matevish: 35:05

See, so she's still got a tablet, just a little bit different.

Drew Thomas: 35:09

yes, but hers, yes, but hers was, hers was an iPad. It was had an on and off button. Yeah, it was, you know, it wasn't, yeah, though those and I'm trying to think of what else it was we got. We have the, we got the crappy tablets, and we got, well, sometimes we get, you'd get, like, you get, like, two pencils, but the, but they were usually this is, you talk about, like, hand-me-downs, and look through your stuff at home and audit what you already have at home, right. Make sure that the erasers haven't solidified. Oh, yeah, they're dry-rotted, yeah, yeah, because that's what the schools would give us, and they would have it was obviously they had bought these pencils probably 10 years ago, and the pencils worked just fine. Yeah, erasers had become this, like, solid tip of rubber, yeah, completely useless, right, right, yeah. So, you know, obviously, yes, do what you can to make sure that you're, you're using what you already have available. But if that particular thing is not functional for your student, go ahead and buy new.

Jeff Matevish: 36:07

Yeah, right, right. All right. I had one more was reach out to community organizations. So, if you're really you know, in a tight spot, see if your local community center or church has some donation that they're taking for school supplies. Maybe you can benefit from that.

Drew Thomas: 36:26

Yeah, I think that's a good point. We do, or at least we did, I think they still do it, the local radio station used to do a, a thing every summer where we would pack the school bus. You would donate stuff to them, and they would just try to jam as much as they possibly could into a school bus, yeah, and they would donate it to different school districts for students that needed stuff, yeah. And check with your guidance counselors too. Sometimes they know things that you may not necessarily know about. My wife is involved with an organization that does sort of a holiday gift buying for, for kids, okay. And they usually get, it's, it's typically things like coats and gloves and boots and clothes and things like that. But they usually also try to give them at least one toy or one, you know, something or other. And yeah, and people donate throughout the year for it, but then they shop for these kids every year, and typically, what they do is they reach out to the guidance counselor, and they say, hey, you know, we have this available. Do you have any students or families that are in need? So, if you are a family that is in need of something like that, and you don't know about these programs, talk with your local guidance, your school's guidance counselor, they probably know something that, that you may not. So, that's a good thing.

Jeff Matevish: 37:43

Good tip, yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas: 37:44

So, yeah, I think this is good stuff. This is all, this is all good info, yeah. So, we'll put links in the description for various things that we've talked about here to try to help you out. So, check out the links in the description if you're, if you're interested in learning more. Yeah. I think we probably have some, some stuff on our learning library too, I'm sure that we can, we can link to. And, yeah, don't forget to like, subscribe, share all that stuff. It really does help. Yeah, if you're, if you're liking the show, if you listen to the show, if you subscribe to the show, and you really, really enjoy what you're hearing, and it's, and it's something that's valuable to you, please take it just, just it doesn't take long to just like the episodes, subscribe, leave a comment. It really helps on all these different platforms that we're on to help build the show and the listenership. So, we'd appreciate it if you could help us out in that way. That'd be great. Yeah, doesn't cost anything, just a little bit of

Jeff Matevish: 38:42

Well said, no, no. All right, I think that's it. your time. And we definitely appreciate it if you can do it.

Drew Thomas: 38:46

Good talk.

Drew and Jeff: 38:47

Good talk. Yeah, thanks. Anything else, you got anything else?

Jeff Matevish: 38:53

This podcast focuses on having valuable conversations on various topics related to banking and financial health. The podcast is grounded in having open conversations with professionals and experts with the goal of helping to take some of the mystery out of financial and related topics, as learning about financial products and services can help you make more informed financial decisions. Please keep in mind that the information contained within this podcast and any resources available for download from our website or other resources relating to Bank Chats is not intended and should not be understood or interpreted to be financial advice. The hosts, guests, and production staff of Bank Chats expressly recommend that you seek advice from a trusted financial professional before making financial decisions. The hosts of Bank Chats are not attorneys, accountants, or financial advisors, and the program is simply intended as one source of information. The podcast is not a substitute for a financial professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. Thank you for listening. Please check out our full library of episodes, which can be found on the ameriserv.com website. You can also download or stream the podcast from your favorite podcast app.