Surely this is one of those topics that’s covered over & over here but i"m not seeing a thread that’s really clear about it.
I’m wondering how much - if any - that you all are giving your kid once they’re in college. In our situation, D has always had paying jobs and I haven’t given her an allowance since 9th grade…she pays her own way. But I do buy some things…her prom dress…or I pay for dinner when we all go out…or backpacks for school, etc.
Now i’m wondering what we should do here…she won’t be working at college (maybe starting 2nd semester but she’s new to the city and would have to find a job first) and will have savings but no income. She’ll be in the dorms, on a meal plan, no car.
So I had been thinking $25 a week…$100 a month. But my colleague (his D is now a sophomore) said, “no way! We do $100 a week and that’s pretty common.”
What do you all do? And do you break it down or just a lump sum?
Interesting…well, to be clear, she won’t have a paying job when she starts college (first time in 4 years) so I guess I was thinking I should help her with the gap…but interesting point that maybe those earnings is how she pays for incidentals…have to think about this one…
We give our kid $200/month. She tends to be anxious, so we prefer that she not work during the school year (and we are glad to have the privilege to afford that). She actually saves a lot of that and will use a good chunk to enjoy her semester abroad, which I am fine with. She may also need some of what she saves to afford a summer internship.
We place money in a debit account, and I think we replenish it when it gets down to a couple hundred dollars. I think we started at 1700-1800, and then I think we did it once more near the end of the first semester and it lasted until the end of academic year…so, close to 3000 in total. Please note, as we get the statements, if we noticed too many Jcrew purchases or a local bar, then those items were certainly prominently brought up on the “Sunday call.”
In short, we expected a couple of abuses, but we also wanted to see how she would react and if you she could responsibly handle budgeting and finances in the long run. As it turns out, she was more than up to the task…
Uh… $100 a week is most definitely NOT common.
Personally, I didn’t know anyone in college who got an “allowance” but would occasionally get supplemental help if needed (unexpected book/course fees, etc) All of my friends worked for their spending money. Most students work and it’s good for them. 10 hours a week is completely reasonable.
We will not be supplying FormerChoatieKid with an allowance. If any necessary expenditures come up that he can’t handle at that moment, we’ll discuss how to pay for them.
As freshmen, our sons lived in a dorm, had either an unlimited or 19 meal/week meal plan, and had money in an account for fast-food type meals available on campus (one university required us to put $300 per semester in an account, although you could get any unused money back at the end of the year.) We probably put $50-$100 on their account for laundry and etc., but otherwise everything else was up to them. (I did send cards every month or so with a $10 stashed in it, and I know their dad gave them about $100 when he dropped them off so they did get a little extra.) When my oldest moved off campus, we paid his rent plus gave his about $250 a month for food and his other bills. Our decision was to pay for books, room and board for 4 years… with their summer jobs they can pay for their entertainment.
We give our daughters an “unlimited budget for anything you think is reasonable.” Many people tell me that this could never work for them but it does for us. We were never expected to pay our own way growing up and we don’t expect that of our kids. They usually do work in the summer and they just hand that money over to us and it goes in an account for them after they graduate.
I’d say in an average month, (only older daughter at college so I’ll use her as example) spent about $150 a month as a freshman who had all meals included and about $300-400 when she had to buy all of her own breakfast/dinner and also gas for the car the rooomate let her use.
When people ask me how my kids with a credit card and no set limit spend I give this as an example:
My daughter was in Paris on a trip. Her very wealthy friends were all buying Hermes bracelets (about $350.) I had texted her at that moment and she said "LOL waiting for all my friends to buy Hermes bracelets). Me: “You can get one if you want. What a great memento of your trip.”
She didn’t respond but later said she did not get one. I asked her why not did she not like it. And she said “I did but I thought about how you would never buy that for yourself and I didn’t feel like I should do that.” She says that’s her guidance for whatever she buys: Is it something I would have gotten for her if she was home.
I guess we are lucky to be able to afford it and have kids that are sensible (and they are lucky to have such nice parents …as they will tell you!)
We expect him to pay for incidentals (shampoo, laundry, furnishings for his room (not bedding, but decorative stuff or non essentials) etc.), entertainment, meals, gas, clothing (although I often give this as a gift on the holidays too), travel, with it.
I’m not sure what the right thing is. I don’t really want him asking me for money for specific items so prefer to handle it this way . . .and it lets him plan. He is pretty careful with money. It will be interesting how my younger, more spendy child deals with it.
But I think many parents have their own different approaches. Sample size of one!
Mine got $200/month, which was more than enough for what I’ll call modest outings - pizza with friends once a week, etc. While it was on them to buy the occasional band-aids or whatever, they were generally stocked up for the full year on most toiletries, as better they go off to school with a dozen toothpaste tubes and shampoos and deodorants at Sam’s Club prices than buy such stuff individually at drugstores, which is a poor value.
I paid for clothes; I saw that as my responsibility. Though they might have purchased the occasional t-shirt for a club or activity. Neither of them were demanding or entitled.
We sent D1 to school with an initial supply of the basics. After that, she paid for whatever she needed. Shampoo and toothpaste etc. don’t add up to much. It’ll be the same deal with D2. We cover everything the school bills us for, once they get to school they pay for the rest.
When D1 was considering staying in her college city for the summer, we said we were fine with it but she would have to cover all her expenses. She has paid for her rent, food, and any other expenses there this summer and has saved enough to be comfortable for the school year. We paid to fly her home for a visit.
Really glad to see this thread, as we are also thinking about this in preparation for sending our son off to college in two weeks. We’re inclined to pay for all remotely school-related stuff and necessities (books, supplies, meal plan, shampoo/toothpaste) but expect that he pay for incidentals like entertainment/extra food/Starbucks addiction out of summer earnings and savings. We’ll pay for travel home (otherwise he might opt to save money and not come home for longer than I’d like!). One issue that is sure to arise is whether we pay for a plane fare for him to visit his high school girlfriend (assuming they make it past the points at which HS relationships typically break up after graduation). It’s not a “necessity,” obviously, but is still something that he may not be able to afford on his own and doesn’t feel to me quite in the same category as an incidental either. Maybe we make that a [big] birthday/holiday gift…
You will hear lots of points of view. My thought was always that OTOH, managing money and a budget and cash flow is an important part of becoming independent… i.e. kid needs to be as self sufficient as possible, with us paying tuition, room and board, etc. which we had committed to do.
OTOH, how terrible if your kid misses out on a terrific opportunity with a modest cost (Boston Symphony Orchestra- some phenomenal conductor- student priced tickets but the friends all want to split a taxi home instead of taking public transportation late at night) because they happen to be “short” that week or month-- after all, there is a learning curve to budgeting like anything else in life.
So we played it by ear with our kids in college. A modest regular allowance to cover the occasional pizza with friends, inexpensive things on campus or close by, toiletries. They were all in cities with nearby “regular” shopping, i.e. nobody needed to buy toothpaste at Whole Foods. And they knew that we were happy to supplement when/if asked. And that our policy when they were in HS (none of them had cars btw- either HS or college) would continue- we would fund emergency taxis or safe transportation with no questions asked when the alternative was getting into a car with a friend who had been drinking, etc. No questions asked.
I don’t think any of them took advantage of us; most of the time when we tried to hand them an extra twenty bucks when they were home they insisted they didn’t need it.
Now that they are all independent, working, fully launched professionally, I’m glad we were able to be a back-stop financially while allowing them to make a couple of mistakes along the way. They had credit cards (on our accounts) in college and I don’t recall ever seeing a bill that we hadn’t discussed ahead of time- and they were careful to buy discounted textbooks when they could, selling them back after the semester, etc.
But I don’t think I’d have been onboard for a blanket $100 a week allowance. That sounds like a recipe for trouble in a lot of ways. Either your kid is running with a very affluent crowd doing stuff you really can’t afford to subsidize… or your kid becomes the bank for the entire dorm. That’s a lot of money unless it’s covering groceries, toilet paper, all textbooks, etc.
Most semesters D either had an on-campus job or a few steady babysitting gigs that gave her spending money for occasional meals out, clothes, movies, etc. We supplemented this with $100 auto-transferred every two weeks for gas, toiletries, laundry & cleaning supplies for her room in an off-campus house, and groceries for the breakfasts & weekend dinners that weren’t covered by her meal plan. Textbooks were fortunately covered by her scholarship, and had we been full-pay, she certainly would not have received $200 from us each month! She was surprised by how many of her friends from wealthier families received much less.
