College is expensive. Beyond tuition, chances are your child will also have to buy books, new clothes, kegs of beer, and even some housewares to furnish a dorm room or apartment.
With all this spending going on, the line between need and want might get a little blurred.
Though ultimately a lot of these expenditures are up to the parental unit, we've put together a list of things that you might think a college student needs, but that you really should avoid buying for back to school all together.
1. A Printer
Most schools offer printing facilities that are either free or cheap to use. If this notion sounds like an inconvenience to your teen, remember this: Ink is expensive, not to mention annoying to replace.
Sure, your kid could be popular being the only one with a printer, but once the ink runs out, these so-called friends will seek free printing elsewhere. And though it might be a valuable lesson for a young adult to learn, you're the one who is going to get a call to replace the black and color ink every other week — and that adds up.
2. A Tablet
In a college setting, even a budget laptop can better handle school-based tasks than an iPad. Writing and editing a term paper on a touchscreen is so difficult, it could easily be a torture worthy of inclusion in Dante's Inferno. (As a punishment for plagiarists, possibly?)
Function-for-function, laptops are cheaper, too. For the same $500 spent on a 16GB Apple iPad with Retina Display (bundled with a $50 Target Gift Card; with $6.99 s&h, a low by $44), you could get a really speedy, lightweight Windows laptop like the ASUS VivoBook Intel Ivy Bridge Core i3 1.8GHz 11.6" Touchscreen Laptop which comes bundled with a 4-year subcription to Microsoft Office 365 University for a puny $359 (with free shipping, a low by $139). All in all, if the back-to-school computing decision boils down to a laptop and a tablet, opt for the laptop... and definitely don't waste your money on also buying a new tablet.
3. Expensive Bedding
Even if your teen's college isn't one that stocks its dorm rooms with extra long mattresses (which are more common than you think), you shouldn't invest in any particularly special bedding; Bobby and his friends are probably going to destroy the whole setup by eating and drinking recklessly on his bed with great frequency, so grab the bargain bin bedding deals instead of the 600-thread count sheets.
Your kid is going to have to buy all new bedding after he graduates, anyway, so why spend a lot on something that is, for all intents and purposes, disposable?
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