How to Buy Inexpensive Clothes for Your Tween

Tweens have been a big market for today's businesses. The high concentration of advertising aimed at the tween population makes it tough for parents to find clothing and shoes which the tween is content with at a reasonable cost. Parents and tweens can tackle the clothing issue with a planned approach to finding inexpensive solutions yet still remain trendy.

Here are several tips for places to find Tween clothing and shoes.

1. Buy Used: Shop at Goodwill, Thrift Store, Yard Sales

You may not find a lot of items, but it is possible to score a deal at the local goodwill store on the latest style of jeans or tees. The key to thrift store shopping is to visit often. New merchandise goes out frequently and once someone grabs an item, there wont be a second or third one available like shopping in retail stores. Your tween may not be happy with this approach until the first big find occurs which saves a large chunk of the clothing budget.

2. Swap on line:

The Internet version of a yard sale, a clothing exchange, or a good will is found in the on line auctions, swap forums, Free-cycles or message boards. Craigslist.com is one of the more popular message boards set aside by local areas where members post items they have for sale. You may be able to find popular items for your tween by linking with another parent selling the sizes you need. Other swap or trade forums are found on yahoo groups, Google groups, and on Delphi forums. You may also find good deals on eBay. The downside to on line swapping or buying is paying postage to ship the item to you.

3. Use an On line coupon

Stores on line often email coupon codes to their customers providing a discount percentages, or free shipping for purchases made at a certain time. You can find codes for a store you want to shop, by searching for the store name and the work coupon. A Google search of Limited Too and the word coupon yields a number of websites which provide coupon information you can use to make your tween clothing purchase an inexpensive one.

4. Find an Outlet

Another way to insure the tween clothing experience is pleasant but inexpensive is to plan a trip to the outlet. If your tween knows their favorite store (and you can bet they do) you can look up that store on www.outletbound.com to determine the closest outlet. If you don't have a particular store in mind you can show the outlets closest to you and see which stores are a part of it. Tweens can find more items at a lower cost and reduce the amount spent on clothing by shopping at the outlet.

5. Watch for Store Promotions

Store promotions can help you lower your overall spending experience when tween clothing shopping. For instance, Limited Too has a program called Too Bucks. For every $50 (pre-tax) you spend during a Too Bucks distribution period, you will receive TWO $25 Too Buck Cards. Each Too Buck may be redeemed on a purchase of $50 or more (after discount and pre-tax) during the Too Buck Redemption Period. This is a store my store promotion so you have to check to see when your store is doing this.

6. Shop your local store

While online shopping can be fun and fill many of the needs of your tween, actual in the store shopping to try things on is a good thing to do especially if your tween is hard to fit. Local stores you might find less expensive yet still trendy include:

Kohl: Department store but Kohls has an excellent Tween shoe collection to choose from and has many tween style tees and other medium price ranged clothing. Kohls also mails out coupons which can be used for store discounts.

Limited Too: This is probably one of the most popular Tween stores. If you shop year round, you can catch many items on the clearance rack. Shop ahead, stash the items in a closet and use them for birthdays and holidays. This way you can provide the trendy tween clothing items at a lower cost.

Old Navy: Old Navy has many in store sales. It's best to stop in often just to see what new styles are out and watch as things your tween likes make it toward the clearance section. Catching an item when it is first clearanced helps to insure you can get a size that works for your tween.

Payless shoes: As the store name says paying less is the idea. Many of the shoe styles in payless are similar to the more expensive trendy shoe brands. Tweens want comfort and style both so they may be able to find the perfect foot ware in payless.

Self Esteem is important to our tweens, and being able to wear things similar to their friends is important. Equally important is teaching our tweens that you cant spend an inordinate amount of money on these items at one time. By shopping around and my shopping at varying times in the year, you should be able to provide your tween with trendy clothing and shoes year round