Allowance in College?

<p>Altho I'm giving less, ellenemope, I don't think you're a spoiler at all. Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, my allowance was $50/month for all incidentals, extras. Inflated to today's dollars on any reasonable discount rate, it's $200 or more. I did "casual" work by plucking temp jobs off the school's career office bulletin board, so I could work when it didn't interfere with academics.</p>

<p>And I also prefer S not to work. I greatly respect those who do, or have to, but on an engineer's schedule, since he doesn't have to, I prefer he not. We have always expected him to work summers; it's character-building, whether the $ are "needed" or not.</p>

<p>We'll give a monthly allowance...but D also earned QUITE a scholarship so our tuition bill is a lot less than we expected. She has summer earnings and savings of her own, so will have additional $$ if need be. She's a miser though...she probably won't dip into her own much. But she'll be graduating hoping to be a paid entertainer...so she'd better have some money in the bank (and few if any loans) when she graduates!</p>

<p>No allowance here last year either. Last year we paid R&B and tuition (minus scholarships and FA), also cell phone (we are on a family plan, so DD's phone is only $12.00 a month). This year she will be living off campus - so we are paying our share of tuition, and then giving her a R&B budget which is actually less than on-campus R&B costs. She'll work and use summer funds for books, meals out, shampoo, etc.</p>

<p>Seems that whenever this topic is discussed, the same pattern of responses emerges. I've found that by the time they get to college, the kids have established a relatively clear pattern of financial acumen. Older s. is a "saver". Looks for the best bargains/deals/prices (chip off the ol' block) and what we gave him per month he put into a savings account and accessed as needed. We started to give him a monthly allowance, but ended up making it an "as needed" kind of thing-- would give him $ into his account for things like the deposit on this upcoming year's duplex, as he'll be living off campus. He had some unexpected medical expenses this year, and we paid for the deductible/copay as we normally would.</p>

<p>He won several small scholarships, and several were checks made out directly to him. We let that be his $$ as he earned it, in my eyes. He's been very responsible with his $$. He finds great deals on used textbooks, which we pay for (he puts it on my creditcard on line). He pays for all his personal purchases. We pay for academically-related expenses. If we pay for it, he scans/emails us the receipt. That way we see what we are paying for :)</p>

<p>Younger s. less responsible with his $$. He thinks change is to be left lying around, and fast food is to be bought at every opportunity. Ergo, we keep a tighter rein on $$ with him. We gave him some cash to take to the summer program he's attending at Duke, but we had the rest of the $ put in travellers checks. He's apparently found out that pizza delivery people won't take travellers checks. Oh well. Such a shame. too bad for him :) Hopefully the travellers checks will make it home, if he doesnt find a place to cash them. When he goes to college (in a few years) if we don't see a change in his spending habits, we'll have a different plan in place than for older s.</p>