We didn’t give DD an allowance last year but did cover some expenses for her - added money to her student card to cover laundry and printing. I also gave her a couple of gift cards to nearby restaurants they like to frequent and will do that again this year. And I purchased the winter coat and warm rain coat as well as Bean boots she needed for walking around campus. Books came out of some of the scholarship money she earned. The rest of her spending came from her savings which covered all her entertainment and sorority dues. I did replace toiletries when she was home and she bought them in between if she needed them. Plus she picked up a dog walking job from a friend which would pay her $20 a walk a few times a month. It didn’t take too long and she got paid nicely and got her dog fix at the same time!
This year she may reduce her meal plan second semester and I’ll help cover the food she wants to purchase instead (fruit and yogurt to make smoothies and other healthier options!)
No allowance to our college kids but we didn’t get off easy because we just paid for everything under the sun lol. Unfortunately, our Son’s meal plan wasn’t ever enough so we supplemented each month with care packages of snacks in bulk and also added flexcash to his account. Also because He’s very active in clubs and very social, ie., outings to SF etc with friends, even though he is relatively frugal, activities and outings added up to a lot of extra costs but we put in for those as well.
If his laptop cable broke, we bought him a new one at $80 a pop. If he came home at break with worn out shoes he went back with two new pair. If he lost weight, we bought him new jeans that fit. If he gained it back, new jeans again. If he had dates with girls they’d go dutch but again, dates add up. Parking tickets, car registration etc all on us. All told, supporting a whole other person for four years from soup to nuts is greatly expensive but my folks did it for me and I didn’t want mine to miss out.
Now my daughter’s spending at college…that’s a whole other level of outlay I would rather not dwell on! To quote a previous poster, “in my next life, I wanna come back as my kids!”
@oldfort …same here. My parents were immigrants and they had the mindset that when you are 18 you are on your own. I was lucky that I was part of this very generous SUNY program and I basically paid zero for my college education. I had a small TAP loan and that’s it. It really was hard though.I had to work, figure out how I was coming home for breaks and how I was going to pay for it. I waited tables, made pizzas, etc. When I lived off campus ( bad move, should have stayed in the dorms) I was starving and resorted to sneaking into the cafeterias. I did not want my kids in the same position. I always splurge for the highest level meal plan. Its my issue not theirs.
our freshman son has worked part time for years; has his tuition paid for, and has a hefty bank account. (well, for a teen its hefty) his fraternity house costs less than dorm housing; so that’s a help to us. we will pay his cell phone & housing; he’ll leave the car at home.
no allowance. I’m hoping he understands, he has more liquid cash than we do! we have yet to talk over fees & books.
hes the oldest of 4; and we are having a tough time figuring out how to do this all fairly.
Freshman here…I’ve worked over the past few years and have money of my own, and my parents are not rich by most measures.
I have a debt card under a joint account number with my parents. They put $1000 on it, and then refill it to $1000 whenever it starts to get low.
They’ve done the same since I turned 16. After a few lessons on keeping a strict budget and knowing where my money is going, they trust me now to spend that money maturely.
I use my own money for eating out, movies, etc, and then use their money for (necessary) clothes, toiletries, books, etc.
For the first year or so, they required me to document all of my spending and send it to them in a giant excel file. Now, they don’t really question it unless I’m spending significantly more than usual.
This way, I’m not using extra allowance money for unnecessary things, nor do they have to worry about an allowance being too small. I think it works
I smacked my head at an old thread about how much to give sons for food and expenses, when they lived off campus. Some quoted numbers that exceeded what we paid for food at home, for four of us.
As freshmen, we had our kids split the cost of their new laptops from summer earnings (because D1 wanted a Mac,) paid for books first semester, and gave them about $125 when we dropped them off. They had some left from summer. In about a month, their pay from school work kicked in and that was that. If they hadn’t had their work, we probably would have sent another 100 mid-term and twice in second semester. They had full meal plans. We always told them fall and the December holiday were when we would pay for stocking up on shampoo, toothpaste, new undies, whatever (we set a limit but were flexible.) Second semester, they had figured out used books, which we did pay for. The next fall they figured out rental books and paid for them from summer earnings.
Like many, we’d occasionally send Love Dollars, maybe $10, maybe more if there was an unusual need. Ours didn’t discover things like eating off campus for a couple of years. (IMO, we shouldn’t pretend they are there for every imaginable want, the campus had plenty of activities offered.) We were close enough that we could drive to see them a couple of times/semester, take them and friends out, maybe stock up on a case of water bottles. Laundry cards cost $10, so we occasionally covered that.
They did have friends with unlimited budgets- and didn’t resent it.
Forgot to mention, my D’s school has mandated unlimited meal plan included in the R&B. There is really no reason to buy extra food. It even includes a few guest meals to eat with friends that live off campus and without meal plan.
I’m not sure about other schools, but my dining hall does not serve Mountain Dew and Pop-Tarts. Even with a late night brain break, one always need snacks.
My parents just gave me my entire college savings prior to freshman year and said we love you and use it wisely. I cover tuition, room, board, sorority, incidentals and spending money out of that lump some. If I screw it up its on me. I have a budget that will cover 4 years of college but am running ahead because scholarships have offset a fair amount of tuition. So it looks like if I’m tight with my budget I may get through a fair amount of grad school too.
We gave our kids zero allowance for college. They worked summers and did work study during school for dates, meals away from cafeteria and books. And no complaints from any of them. This is over a time period of 1st kid as freshman in 2001 to youngest attending now. Maybe they got tired of hearing how in my day, I had to work 40 hours a week to pay for school…
There is clearly a huge disparity in the amount of spending money parents want their kids to have! My kids are still in high school, but will start college in 2017 and 2018.
I’ve told both kids that I’d like for them to score high enough on the PSAT to get a full ride scholarship, and if they do so I plan to try to scrape up enough money to be very generous in terms of a decent car and spending money. I plan to give each child exactly the same amount of money, so if one child fails to earn a scholarship or decides to attend some expensive school with no merit aid then one child will have to struggle while the other lives the Life of Riley.
Personally, I’d like for my kids to have enough extra money to pay for all of their fraternity or sorority extras (t-shirts, gifts, etc.), attend some away football games, be able to take a date out to a nice dinner, buy nice clothes, have their dress shirts laundered and starched, etc. That’s not going to happen on $100 per month.
Personally, I’d like for my kids to have enough extra money to pay for all of their fraternity or sorority extras (t-shirts, gifts, etc.), attend some away football games, be able to take a date out to a nice dinner, buy nice clothes, have their dress shirts laundered and starched, etc. That’s not going to happen on $100 per month" "
I think what it costs to be in a sorority or fraternity (above and beyond the actual dues) likely differs by school. We spent money on formals and pictures, but not gifts. We simply didn’t attend away football games - who cared about football?
I had to laugh about the comment from one poster whose daughter is very frugal with her own money. I can make the same statement, but I have to add that she is not frugal when it comes to her parent’s money.
My daughter has an on-campus job, but it is part of her financial aid package and so that cannot be used for spending money. We have set up an automatic transfer from her saving account to checking account at $100 month for spending money. This money was earned from a summer job. This system seemed to work well last year when she was a freshman and we will use it again this coming school year. We pay for books and supplies, the extra money is for Uber rides, meals off campus, museums, concerts, etc.
^^Yes at some schools (and I’d say Alabama is one of the highest), sorority fees are high. As a contrast, for my daughter I paid about $500 for the semester she pledged (included initiation, her badge, and social dues). Second semester I think it was $275. For my other daughter who lives and eats in her house, it will be $4200 this semester, about the same as the dorm but with a better meal plan and includes the dues, both local and international.
I find it interesting that parents control their kids money. Even the money they earned or saved. At what point do you allow the them to act like adults?
“The average cost (meal plan and fees) for a sorority member living out-of-house at the University of Alabama is $3300 per semester. The high is $4500.”
Irrelevant for anyone not at Alabama. It’s far, far less elsewhere.
Rising freshman here again. I think it is wise for students, even adult students, to be accountable to parents for their spending if they are getting an allowance from their parents. I personally don’t think of an allowance as a gift of money, but more of a stipend for expenses such as toiletries and laundry, and any extra is discretionary. It is a lot easier for parents to adjust their student’s allowance if they know where that money is going.
If they earn their own money they should be accountable to themselves for it and keep track of where it goes (e.g. Where did my money go this semester? Maybe I shouldn’t have gone out with friends every weekend or bought that $60 sweater)
