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Smaltz: Tax-Free Back-to-School Shopping While Camping a Win

For the first time, I was in the state of Virginia on Tax-Free Back to School weekend and made use of the time to save. True, we went into Wal-Mart with lesser ambitions, but what Mom can walk past an aisle of school supplies advertised at 50 percent off and buy one get one free? It didn’t matter to me that we were in Williamsburg or staying at a campground or that we’d come in for batteries and a bag of ice. I came, I saw, I shopped.

“You don’t have their lists,” my husband said in an attempt to get in and out of the mega store without buying reams of loose leaf paper. “Who says I don’t?” I retorted, going to the school link on my iPhone. He shook his head in defeat and wandered off into automotive.

Last year, I went to Target in late August with a compilation of my children’s four separate lists. Turns out that sort of forethought made shopping much more efficient as this year in my last-minute tax-free glee, I went up and down the same aisles three different times.

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