A lifestyle influencer who goes by TJ posted a TikTok haul video showing $2,000 in back-to-school shopping for her kindergartner, and the comments turned on her fast. "Definitely too much $$$ on a child that age," one commenter wrote.
About $1,200 went to uniforms for her daughter's private school, where shirts and jackets from designated vendors run $50 to $70 each. Another $280 covered custom-embroidered gear to meet the school's labeling rules, and the haul included teacher gifts. She told MarketWatch her family can afford it, but that grocery inflation has changed how she shops for everything else, down to buying a deep freezer for bulk meat. "We're just having it hard as parents because everything is going up," she said.
Her video sits inside a bigger trend. Haul videos, where students unbox mountains of new clothes and supplies for the camera, have become a back-to-school staple on TikTok and YouTube. Some run past $5,000, and entire channels now post hours-long compilations. The formula is consistent: a smiling teen with oversized bags, a disclaimer about not bragging, then item after item held up to the lens.
The videos are actually moving money. A survey from payments platform Lightspeed Commerce found 62% of K-12 parents pay more than they planned because their child asks for a specific brand or trending item. Shopping expert Trae Bodge told MarketWatch the mechanics are simple: a kid who sees designer sneakers all over their feed comes home asking for the $300 pair.
What families actually spend
The averages are far below the haul videos. The National Retail Federation puts K-12 back-to-school spending at $863.86 per family for 2026, up about $6 from last year. College students average $1,438, up from $1,326. Total back-to-school and college spending is projected at a record $146.8 billion, and the K-12 share hit $43.3 billion, up from $39.4 billion in 2025.
The near-flat K-12 average hides some movement underneath. LendingTree found electronics prices, think Chromebooks and calculators, have dropped 12.5% since 2019, offsetting increases in physical school supplies (up 9.9%), clothing (up 6.8%) and shoes (up 6.7%). Its spending basket breaks down to roughly $296 for electronics, $249 for clothing, $169 for shoes and $144 for supplies. Matt Schulz, LendingTree's chief consumer-finance analyst, said families doing well are spending more while stretched families pull back, which nets out to numbers that look stable.
The experts' advice for handling the brand pressure mostly comes down to friction. Make the kid put allowance or summer-job money toward the $300 item and watch how fast priorities sort themselves. Buy the name brands secondhand on resale apps. Keep some of the budget in reserve until after the first week, when kids see what their friends actually wear and fall prices drop toward Labor Day. Sixteen states also run sales-tax holidays timed to back-to-school season.
Whether any of it survives contact with a 14-year-old's feed is another question. We've covered how parents and teachers split on phones in schools, and the haul economy is one more argument in that fight. It's also a live case study in the gap between what kids absorb online and what anyone teaches them about money, a job that schools and parents keep handing each other.
Sources
MarketWatch: This mom spent $2,000 on her kindergartner as viral back-to-school hauls spin out of control
National Retail Federation: Back-to-school spending data
LendingTree: Back-to-school shopping study
