<p>What do you estimate is a reasonable amount of spending money to give your child per month? As room and board is already paid, what else do students spend their money on?</p>
<p>At local public schools, student come from surrounding neighborhoods so students have similar socio-economic backgrounds. BS kids, however, hail from broad geographic area and broad socio-economic spectrum. How do you help your child deal with sizable differences in economic means among his/her peers?</p>
<p>Estimate about $1,000 for books and incidentals. $50-100/month for other stuff. We were surprised how fast it adds up - dorm fees, activity fees, fund raisers, new equipment and shoes for sports teams, logo stuff (hoodies, etc), dorm pride t-shirt , reeds for an instrument, not to mention trips to the mall (including bus fare), sundries from the drug store, or eating in the on campus grill. I was surprised to find fees such as rental and drycleaning of her formal gown for a concert tour. I could have bought a designer gown for less. Sigh. The transportation to and from the airport and to and from off campus activities is often an added charge. And don’t forget formal dances and proms.</p>
<p>If you’re on a tight budget, estimate $50/month spending and incidentals plus $800 for school books and supplies and inquire about buying used books on campus (easier the second year since students can buy the books from outgoing students). </p>
<p>Frankly - all their basic needs are covered on campus and the Adcoms are adamant especially with scholarship families - that some minor amount should be allocated so the kids don’t feel left out, but that huge amounts of spending aren’t really necessary. For instance - at one prom the girls simply traded dresses. At another, parents and students donated clothing for a dress exchange and where girls could “rent” a dress for $5 which went to charity.</p>
<p>As for economic diversity - when I attended BS I was the “scholarship” kid but it turned out I was better prepared for budgeting my money and shopping “sales” than some of my peers. So i did just fine and didn’t feel deprived. There wasn’t the “option” of getting extra funds, so I was prudent about how I allocated the money. Even though my own family economics are more secure, we passed the trait along. So my D does go to the mall with her friends, but she limits her purchases to when the clothes are on clearance. We ship care packages and slip a $20 in occasionally as a surprise. It means more that way.</p>
<p>There’s another thread on this subject but I can’t seem to locate the link. Maybe another parent can help me out. The discussion there was hilarious and helpful.</p>
<p>Start way low and see how they cope. Most school rule books provide a ball park allowance figure. Have recently experienced two BS with different billing procedures which required dissimilar allowance practices. Let me preempt the cell phone issue with my opinion that is is persona non grata, a necessary evil and to shop around. Definitely buy the insurance if available otherwise a Walmart special.</p>
<p>I beg to differ. Obviously, an allowance will depend on the ability of the family to provide one. My daughter makes due with very little. And she doesn’t have a cell phone. $800 a year for books is a valid expense, but I don’t consider that “allowance.”</p>
<p>MINIMUM</p>
<p>$10 per week for pizza or some kind of munch-out food</p>
<h2>$25 per month for a movie or special event or visit to town etc</h2>
<p>$65/month</p>
<p>Parlabane - that’s a good estimate - it’s just that parents get “surprises” that aren’t normally part of an allowance - hence I had no idea that dorm activity fees - for instance - weren’t part of the tuition - or that we had to rent the formal outfit for orchestra performances (or pay for the bus to Lincoln center . . . or . . . .)</p>
<p>You get my drift. Better to know up front then to be surprised when the otherwise frugal kid ends up with a negative balance. I do know that full scholarship kids have many of those things absorbed. The rest of us - well… (it’s a shocker for sure).</p>
<p>Parents, great advice. THX! Wow, a lot of extra expenses we hadn’t thought of.</p>
<p>On the issue of cellphones, what do you do if your C’s school is out-of-state/out-out-area? Do you get a local service plan for your child, or simply live with expensive roaming charges? Is pre-paid service the best option?</p>
<p>PhotoOp, how did you physically wrest a cellphone phone out a teenagers’s hands? I thought the objects were permanently fused together.</p>
<p>They are fused to their hands, and hardwired into their circulatory system. We use Verizon and her phone is on the family plan. No long distance, no roaming unless far from a cell tower, and no minutes counted against calls to other members in the family. (It’s also the the company with the strongest signal at her school).</p>
<p>Most schools don’t allow cell phone use in the school buildings (including hers) so we haven’t seen an abuse. She uses it primarily to text us when she’s out of the building or in her dorm.</p>
<p>But our favorite use for the cell phone is that when she’s traveling back and forth to school, we can stay in touch or get a text that says “met friends in the airport, we’re sitting together on the plane.” You have no idea what such a little gesture does to ease the shock of your child traveling without you.</p>
<p>Consider SKYPE if you have a computer and internet. It’s free. Easy to set up and a blast because you can see your child’s face as they talk. She pans her room so we can see it, plus we can talk to her friends as they drop by. At the very least we can listen in on some of the hilarious interaction when she’s interrupted. The other bonus - she spent a long weekend at a classmate’s house and Skyped so we could meet the parents (and the family pets). </p>
<p>For phones - call the school and find out which phone networks have the best signals on that specific campus.</p>
<p>Thx Exie. As usual on this website, you are a wealth of information!</p>
<p>Our daughter’s spending far less money on snacks & pizza than last year. I guess there’s a reason it’s called the freshman 15. She’s a local boarder, so I do bring things like copy paper when I visit, if it’s convenient for me.</p>
<p>The cell phone is mostly used for texting. We do the pay-as-you-go plan. If it’s lost, that limits the $ loss. </p>
<p>We gave our daughter a USAA teen checking account, with a debit card. We have been surprised by how responsible she has been in using it. The charges have been occasional shoes or seasonal items of clothing–and she always calls home first.</p>
<p>We do $25/week year round that is deposited automatically to her checking account. If she has extra expenses, she’ll pay it and then we just transfer that amount into her account to cover it. Her school has a Bank of America ATM on campus and a branch within walking distance. We set up the account during the summer (at home) prior to her first attending. It’s worked out well. We have our accounts connected so that we can easily make transfers and I can keep tabs on her account.</p>
<p>My daughter gets $50/month and it is working out fine.</p>
<p>zp</p>
<p>She never had a cell phone to start with so it isn’t something that is missed. I think she has problems now that so many kids have them (can you say 100%?). She uses a long distance card to call home. It is nerve wracking when she’s traveling - that’s the only time I wish she had one. She had a flight cancellation at Christmas and she borrowed friends phones who were also stranded and when they moved on she actually borrowed a phone from a friendly airline agent. That was a godsend - absolutely. The next day when she finally arrived, she borrowed a phone from a shuttle driver and called us to tell us the shuttle was on the way. It was a nightmare - I definitely rethought the whole phone situation that day. But then I sent her back to school after break without a phone. I figured we got through that one, we can survive anything. What we can’t survive right now is a cell phone + text bill. I don’t know how everyone pays all these “little” expenses. Am I the only one left feeling the effects of the recession?</p>
<p>You have good company. I am feeling the effects of recession in the allowance I am getting.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No. </p>
<p>Our kids use dorm phones and WE call during specific hours so the long distance fees are on the home phone.</p>
<p>But I know some friends who swear by the family plan for unlimited texting…</p>
<p>Indeed - when I saw how much texting cost (the companies quietly raised the cost from 5 cent to 20 cents per text incoming and outgoing) I was “swearing.” 
Hence the unlimited plan which was about 1/3 of the cost of ala carte.</p>
<p>(Actually, she actually uses cell phone texts less at BS than she did at home when her friends lived in the same city. Hmmm - maybe I can drop the unlimited plan now!) bwa ha ha.</p>
<p>PhotoOp: Have you looked at prepaid phones? Net10, for example, has a 750mins/30day plan for $25/month–and there’s no plan, so you can cut it out the months that your kid is at home. Ours calls home a lot, so that has been a good plan for us, but it’s also possible to go even cheaper–with coupon codes, you can get a tracfone for $20 for three months with about 200 minutes on it. My husband and I each have one of those–we use our cell phones rarely, and those work great for us. My other kid, who primarily texts and rarely calls, has a $5/month prepaid plan.</p>
<p>I think this might be the older thread on a related topic to which Exie was referring:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-parents/667320-attention-current-bs-parents-where-how-do-you-spend-your-bs-student.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-parents/667320-attention-current-bs-parents-where-how-do-you-spend-your-bs-student.html</a></p>
<p>I am all ears as well on this subject; my son has already asked me what sort of allowance he will get when he goes away next year, and I told him I didn’t yet have any idea what he would need. Would appreciate hearing from more parents about how much they give their kids per month.</p>
<p>On cell phones–we have a Verizon family plan, so my son’s phone is only 10/month with unlimited texting and calling, and he gets a new basic free phone every two years. My phone is the one with the big monthly charge, but three others can be added for $10/mo each on the family plan, so it works out decently on a pro-rated basis.</p>
<p>Most boarders go out on weekends to events like Anime Boston, do you have to pay for those or is it covered in the tuition?</p>
<p>I get the sense that expenses vary widely from school to school–my kid NEVER goes to Boston unless we visit–he thought he would, but in reality, he’s just too busy. He hasn’t even taken the shuttle to the mall–just does whatever’s happening for free at school on the week-end, and orders take-out maybe 2 or 3 times a month with some buddies in the dorm.</p>
<p>I think it’s best to just lowball it for a few months. At Exeter, for example, the stuff they buy at the Grill is all charged to us at home; we didn’t know that before he went to school, and that’s stuff we would have thought of as allowance expenditure.</p>