Back to School on a Budget with Dollar General

This post brought to you by Dollar General. All opinions are 100% mine.

I was recently given the challenge of shopping for back to school with Dollar General with just $35.  I am not a frequent shopper at Dollar General but I do love a good challenge!  Seriously, I love it.  Since we homeschool, I am always on the lookout for great deals to help me stock up on supplies for the year.  I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by the school supply selection at our local Dollar General store.  I knew this challenge would be a BREEZE! The first thing I did was head over to the Dollar General site to see what the latest sale ad contained.  There were some AMAZING prices on things like pencils, notebooks, erasers and even Kleenex!  I also spied, with my little eye, a coupon for $5 off a purchase of $25 or more.  Yep.  Easy peasy for this challenge.  So, of course, I scoured the ad and made a list of all the items we needed.  I kept a tally of the price (rounding up for tax) as I went.  I was satisfied with my list and headed to the store! When I arrived, I was pleased to see that most of the items in the sale ad were readily available in the school supplies section of Dollar General.  There were a few things that were a little different and some had slightly different prices than I had planned for.  That’s ok though because I still had that nice $5 off coupon.  I did some quick figuring in my head and went to loading my cart with everything that was on my list! Here’s my list:

• 4 boxes of Kleenex (75 Count)
• 6 packs of filler paper (125 sheets each)
• 9 One subject spiral notebooks
• 2 Three subject spiral notebooks
• 1 pack of 4 mechanical pencils (I threw these in extra.  They weren’t on my original list.)
• 2 packs of  fashion pencils (8 per pack)
• 2 packs of fashion erasers (rectangular 2 per pack)
• 4 Three ring binders with clear view covers
• 8 Capri Sun big pouch drinks
• 1 Fashion journal (I threw this in extra.  It wasn’t on my original list.)

That is a total of 39 items!!  Do you think I met the challenge? Here’s my receipt: So I was over by $6.34!  That was pretty much the cost + tax for the 2 extras that I added at the last minute.  Had I not bought the journal and mechanical pencils, I would have come in right at my budget!  Not too shabby considering I am not a regular shopper at Dollar General and the few price differences I was met with.  I am pretty proud of how it turned out! Now…what will you be stocking up on for back to school?  Whatever it is, I recommend visiting your local Dollar General to stock up on savings!