This was specifically why I asked for Friday off in addition to my 3 weeks of leave.
I like to get the jobs out of the way before the fun can begin.
I also like to spend money on the essentials before I can relax and enjoy my holiday.
In South Africa, our schooling system is broken down into 12 Grades. Aime is Grade 11 in 2025, Meren is Grade 9 and Matthew is Grade 6.
My shopping strategy was simple:
- Do not procrastinate and get it done on the very first day.
- Take all three kid's lists and make one master list of stock I need. (ie, 16x 192 page Hard Cover books with Feint & Margin instead of looking through 3 lists to find how many I need)
- Look at the most common items in the stationery lists and price them on major stockist's websites. One shop known for good prices does not have a website but I would go look at their prices and compare with my other findings.
- Buy everything at the shop that had the majority of cheaper items.
In the end, I went with a Stationery shop called PNA. They are a chain store and they had cheaper prices on everything eve compared to the large Chinese general store well known for their cheap prices. (Also their shelves were a disaster)
With that I came out to a whopping R3786 (roughly $206).
I realize now that I got home that I actually forgot about Meren's Scientific Calculator. I will buy that at the next opportunity. This should be around R300 putting the total over R4000 so $220ish
Now that this task is done, I can rest easy that this big price ticket item is sorted out. No need to worry and stress about whether or not I can afford it for next year.
Of course, we will need to cover these books and label the stationery, but that is for another day! Christmas and New Year's still still coming up!
Thank you for reading this post!
Cheers!
@zakludick
