NEW YORK (AP) -- As the back-to-school shopping season returns, so does the annual tug of war between kids who want the trendiest clothes and parents who need to hold to a budget.
But there are ways that parents can keep the stress to a minimum and teach some valuable money lessons to their children at the same time.
Parents like Leah Ingram of New Hope, Pennsylvania, have found it helps to involve their kids in back-to-school shopping decisions.
Armed with their school's list of recommended supplies, Ingram and her daughters, 9-year-old Annie and 11-year-old Jane, recently took advantage of a penny sale at a local office supply store.
Ingram paid for the basics such as pencils, folders and notebooks. But if the girls wanted something fancier, "they could spend their own allowance money," she added.
The girls did just that, with Annie choosing a special pencil box and Jane selecting animal-shaped erasers for her pencils, said Ingram, who works as an etiquette and protocol consultant.
Back-to-school budgeting has become more important as prices have risen.
A survey by the National Retail Federation found the average family expects to spend $527 on back-to-school items this year, up 18 percent from $444 last year. Of that, teenagers are spending an average of nearly $29 of their own money, and preteens are investing about $13, the study by the Washington, D.C.-based trade group said.
June Walbert, a certified financial planner with USAA in San Antonio, said parents should work with their children to set priorities.
"Turn back-to-school shopping into a family event, just like planning the family vacation," she said. "Families don't just pick up and go on a vacation, they plan."
Deciding what to buy, where to buy it and who will pay for it teaches the importance of budgeting and helps avoid overspending, she said.
"It also can cut down significantly on arguments at the mall if you've decided in advance what you're shopping for," Walbert said.
Separating wants and needs
Larry Kutner, a psychologist who worked with USAA on a recent survey of teenagers' attitudes toward money, said the results showed that financial education doesn't always come from conversations.
"Teens watch their parents' behavior closely," Kutner said. "If the parents say 'You should save,' then go to the mall and spend, spend, spend, that's the message that gets across."
Kutner, who is co-director of the Harvard Medical School center for mental health and media, said part of the challenge for parents was helping children distinguish between needs and wants. Say a child insists on a particular pair of jeans that costs $75 compared with "generic" jeans at $24.95.
"You can tell the child, 'I'll give you enough money for generic jeans, and you have to decide if you want to spend $50 of your own money for the designer jeans,"' he said. "You'll be surprised how often spendthrifts become fiscal conservatives."
Carol Young, a family financial management specialist at Kansas State University Research and Extension in Manhattan, Kansas, said it has become harder for parents to limit spending because of all the back-to-school advertising campaigns.
"Retailers see it as a big marketing opportunity -- like Christmas, Mother's Day, Easter," she said. "Kids are being hit in print media, radio and TV with ads that are aimed at the children."
One way to counter this is to make a list of what the child needs, such as pens and notebooks, and a second list for "wants" that would be nice to have if there's enough money in the budget, she said.
When budgeting, families should not overlook that there are school expenses beyond supplies and clothes such as instrument rental costs and school activity fees.
Then, she said, make it clear that there are spending limits.
"Let the children know that there's only so much money and we have to make decisions how we stretch this money around what we need to buy," Young said. "So if we spend more on a fancy backpack, there will be less for jeans or socks or pencils."