Christmas should never take anyone by surprise. Every year, there it is: December 25.
Nevertheless, unless a person is smart enough to set up a Christmas Club account at their bank or otherwise tuck away a few extra dollars throughout the year or just be rich enough to be able to absorb all the extra expenses that come along with playing Santa Claus, year after year, Christmas is a financially challenging season.
And guess what: So is Back-to-School.
By now, everyone in our community should have caught on to the pattern that school starts around the second week of August. Kids in Owensboro/Daviess County have gone to school all the way from preschool to graduation on that schedule. And in many cases, so did their parents.
So this should be no big surprise to anyone.
But whether parents are ready or not, preparing kids for their return to the classroom requires a significant monetary output.
» Clothes, shoes, haircuts.
» Bookbags, paper, pencils.
» Binders, notebooks, markers.
» Kleenex, calculators, crayons.
» Folders, glue, scissors.
» Books, technology fees, extracurricular expenses.
» After-school program fees, lunch money.
You don’t need to be a math major to figure out how quickly it all adds up.
Family Resource and Youth Service Centers, community partners and other resources are available to provide assistance to those who are truly in need, but for a lot of other families, all these expenditures pose a truly difficult challenge to the household budget.
I get that. I’ve been there.
Every August was a struggle and scramble to fill the shopping cart with supplies for four kids.
But as I look back now, from the vantage point of time and distance, here’s the thing:
I wasn’t just buying pencils and paper.
I was buying seeds – seeds that were nurtured and cultivated, and which eventually blossomed.
All those supplies, packed carefully in those brightly colored, still-stiff new backpacks on the night before the first day of school, became tools in the hands of my children.
Tools their teachers guided them in using as they built a foundation of learning … a foundation upon which they built their lives.
In a very real way, one could trace a line from those crookedly-crayoned worksheets from preschool and kindergarten all the way to college and then to careers that have allowed my kids – and millions of others just like them – to be employed in rewarding careers, and to live happy lives that are successful in all the ways that mean the most.
So here’s what I want young parents to remember as they stare at that long list of school supplies they need to fulfill for their child or children this year:
The money you are spending is not a cost.
It’s an investment.
