This is one of the videos we produced with the Central Bank of Malta in our budgeting series. Download it by clicking here.

Let me introduce the ĠEMMA family.  I am Maria.  I am Tony’s wife.  I am 40 years old and I work in my father’s family business.  Tony, my husband is 42 years old.  Tony works as a manager in a large Maltese business.  We have two kids:  Matthias, our son who is 11 years old, and is now in secondary school, and Angele, our daughter who is 17 and is finishing upper secondary school this scholastic year.

Here we go again, I said to myself.  I just received from Matthias’, my 11 year old son, a letter from his school. Matthias, will be going up to Form II this coming scholastic year.  Well, Level 8 it is today called.  Seems that everything we did in my day had something wrong with it. They even changed how to do long divisions and multipilcations from what I was taught!

Download the ĠEMMA Back to School Calculator by clicking here.

I am digressing.  Matthias’s just informed me of the books, uniforms, stationery and all other stuff he needs as for Form II – oopps, sorry meant Level 8!

Well.  I learnt big time how best to prepare for a new scholastic term, when Angele, my 17-year-old daughter, progressed from, eh, Level 7 to Level 8.  When she started Level 7, I bought everything new – books, copybooks, uniform.  It cost me a fortune. It truly messed up the family budget.

I spoke to some friends of mine who had elder kids – and they showed me what I should do to minimise these costs.  They introduced me to parents’ groups on Facebook, told me to keep an eye out for sales, how to look for quality second-hand books, etc.  And that’s what I did when Angele was promoted to Level 8.  I tell you, I spent less than 50% that I did the year before.

And this is what I have been doing since.  I have already bought all of the books second hand for Matthias’ Level 8 studies, picked up the shoes, shirts and trousers in last year’s post-Christmas sales.  I am practically done!

You wish to learn more about how to prepare for sending your kids back to school this forthcoming scholastic year?  View the ĠEMMA- Central Bank of Malta video to know more.  Also click here to download the ĠEMMA Back to School Calculator.

Let us know your thoughts.  We look forward to hearing from you.  And we at ĠEMMA encourage you to share this link or the video with your friends or publicly on Facebook.

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