When I was a kid, saving money on school supplies was a multiday, multistate slog. To keep costs down, my mom would plan our summer vacations around neighboring states’ tax-free weekends. We’d all pile into our family’s giant purple minivan and drive over the border to pick up any supplies we knew we needed. Then, after vacation, we’d hit up stores in our home state for anything we forgot or couldn’t find.Going to such Griswoldian lengths is less necessary today, but the need to save on school supplies remains. Americans spent an estimated $38.8 billion on back-to-school shopping in 2024, a whopping expense that followed a record-breaking $41.5 billion in 2023. With the ongoing introduction of new tariffs and ever-increasing tech needs, parents and guardians could find back-to-school shopping in 2025 more expensive than ever before.Shopping for back-to-school doesn’t have to be a financial nightmare, though. Many school supplies are overpriced — we know this because we track prices — but it isn’t impossible to avoid a hefty total at checkout.Our price-tracking from 2022 to date shows that many of the very best price drops on Wirecutter’s school-supplies picks actually show up in sales that begin well before (or after) classes start — sadly, not at the right time for busy parents in who are hurrying to check must-haves off their lists just before the school year starts. Outside of those early and late-arriving discounts, we've found that the best time to do your back-to-school shopping depends on what specifically you’re buying. And although you’re less likely to score A-plus deals on school supplies, backpacks, and lunchboxes in the last weeks of summer break, you can get more bang for your buck in the days before school starts in a number of ways, including combining sales with student discounts and tax-free weekends.