- KSL Investigators compared school supply prices at five major retailers in Utah.
- Dollar General offered the lowest total, excluding scientific calculators, at $26.10.
- Despite tariffs, overall costs decreased slightly, with notable price drops for calculators.
SALT LAKE CITY — The KSL Investigators have hit the back-to-school aisles at five major retailers the last five years to compare prices for the same list of school supplies — everything from pencils to backpacks and notebook paper to scientific calculators.
The list is one we got from a local teacher. It includes a backpack, a scientific calculator, a ruler, a water bottle, two erasers, a pair of scissors, two glue sticks, 24 pencils, three notebooks, filler paper and three binders.
We shopped at these five retailers: Target, Walmart, Dollar General, Smith's and Amazon.
At Dollar General, we paid the lowest for our list, paying $26.10 to get out the door. But there's a big caveat. The story does not carry scientific calculators. But add in $10 for the cost of a scientific calculator you could buy somewhere else – the total is still below the other four retailers.
The complete list cost $38.96 at Target, $41.15 at Walmart, $53.55 at Smith's and $59.10 on Amazon, which has always been the most expensive in our five-year-and-running case study.
Tariff impact?
The backdrop to this year's school shopping is President Trump's on-again, off-again tariffs that have dominated headlines, including last week's announcement of a new tariff plan expected to take effect Aug. 7.
Many school supplies, from notebooks to calculators, are imported. And when those goods get taxed at the port, you end up paying more at the register. But did we?
Well, some items were more expensive than last year. The glue sticks at Target doubled in price, as did our cost for notebooks at Dollar General. Buying a ruler at Walmart cost us nearly 63% more this year than it did last year. And we saw noticeable price jumps in the cost of binders at three of the five retailers.
That said, we paid the same price for almost every single item on our list at Smith's, except for the calculator and the water bottle. Both dropped in price compared to the year before.
Lesson learned
Altogether, we racked up $218.86 on KSL's credit card to shop our five retailers for this year's school supply list. Last year, that total was $221.50. So, we wound up paying just a hair over $2.50 less this year – if you can believe it.
The lesson learned from our back-to-school budget breakdown: Prices, in many instances, may have taken a slight breather.
The item that really surprised us was the scientific calculator – it was cheaper everywhere we shopped, except at Dollar General, where it wasn't available. Considering it's a consumer electronics item, the price drop fell short of our expectations.
