Back-to-school shopping is putting significant financial pressure on parents — and some are turning to debt and risky financial behaviors to keep their children from feeling left out.
Dr. Erika Rasure, PhD, CFT™, Chief Financial Wellness Advisor at Beyond Finance, joined CBS News Chicago to discuss Beyond Finance’s research revealing the emotional and financial pressures families face during back-to-school season.
The Beyond Finance survey found 70% of parents feel pressure to buy their children the same clothes, technology, and supplies as other families, while 61% have purchased something specifically so their child wouldn’t feel left out. Among parents who made pressure-driven purchases, 42% later regretted them.
Dr. Rasure offered parents several ways to resist that pressure without making children feel deprived. She recommends involving kids in prioritizing what matters most to them, remembering that everything doesn’t need to be purchased at once, and giving families permission to be resourceful.
Rather than framing those decisions negatively, Dr. Rasure suggests making them collaborative: “We’re deciding together what to spend our money on.”
Her message offers parents an important reminder: A successful back-to-school season doesn’t have to mean buying everything on the list — or going into debt to keep up with everyone else.
Social back-to-school pressure isn’t just hitting parents at the checkout counter. It’s affecting the financial decisions families make.
About Dr. Erika Rasure
Dr. Erika Rasure, PhD, CFT™ is an internationally recognized financial therapist, educator, and researcher with over two decades of experience helping people transform their relationship with money. She holds a doctorate in Personal Financial Planning from Kansas State University and is a Certified Financial Therapist™ — one of a small number of practitioners in the country to hold both credentials. As Chief Financial Wellness Advisor at Beyond Finance, she leads five weekly financial wellness sessions with clients navigating debt and is the creator of Beyond Finance’s Financial Wellness RESET™ Framework, Assessment, and Curriculum — a proprietary, clinically-informed model that addresses the behavioral and emotional reasons financial advice so often fails to stick, helping people change not just what they do with money, but how they relate to it. She serves on the Financial Review Boards of Investopedia, The Balance, VeryWell Family, and VeryWell Parents, chairs the Financial Therapy Clinical Institute Research Board, and her expertise has been featured on NBC’s Today Show, CNBC, CNN, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron’s, the Associated Press, and USA Today.