Does everyone give all their kids the same amount?
Our DS is commuting to a state school, so we’re not giving him a regular allowance. We gave him my husband’s car (DH gets a new used car) and are paying for his insurance, tuition, and housing/food. He has a job (full-time in the summer & 8-10 hours/week during school) so he’ll provide his own spending money and pay for his books and gas. We do give him money now and then to go to the movies or lunch with friends because we still pay when his younger sister goes out with her friends.
However, DD, who has dyslexia, dyscalculia, & dysgraphia, won’t be working during the school year, so we’ll probably end up giving her more spending money than DS. We want both to be able to build up their savings and she won’t be able to if she has to use hers for spending money. It’s not the same, but we believe it’s fair. DS also believes it’s fair because he thinks it was unfair to her to be born dyslexic.
My DD has a nice savings from graduation, odd jobs, etc. We’ve talked a lot about making her money last. We will supply her with toiletries, school supplies, etc. Tuition, R&B and books will all be paid for. The area right off campus is residential, so there aren’t too many easy things to spend money on. She will not have a car. There is school transportation to downtown, the mall, shopping centers, but I don’t know how often she’ll use it. Right now her plan is $50 / week budget - knowing some weeks may be $20 and other may be more. We’ve talked about not blowing it all every week in case there’s an opportunity for a weekend away or a trip to the beach (gas money, food). She’s going to need to learn and says there is an app she wants to use that will help her track what she’s spending. We don’t plan to send an allowance, but will certainly treat here to a gift card in the mail or some cash when we visit for parents’ weekend. I don’t want her to count on it, though. I’d rather it be a treat. If she’s wise with her money, she could make it last for 3 semesters. But, we’ll see. That on-campus job may come sooner than she thinks.
I give my kids money and let them made mistakes on a small scale. I do expect mistakes otherwise how else are they going to learn. Yes the $5K to $10k gift money that I save for them until they turned 18 were giving to them. No string attached. No Fidelity account. But everybody is different. It depends on your comfort level.
However, S was an RA. We also gave him (in a long term account, not everyday spending) what he saved us in room and board (approx $14k). My in laws had done the same when H was an RA, and both kids knew that we would give the difference but only S was interested in becoming an RA. (Of course, it was totally up to them. No pressure.)
The other thing that we are doing is - we are strong believers in saving when young and the value of compound interest. So in their first / new jobs, they are putting away the very max in their 401ks and we are gifting them the same amount (up to the gift limit per year). So their paychecks are very small but then we give the difference - this enable them both to save aggressively for the future (and take advantage of company matches) but still enjoy their paychecks in the here and now. The HR people are a little baffled by the aggressive of a young person putting away so much but oh well.
@austinmshauri when my kids were little, a friend gave me a great line: “Fair isn’t always equal and equal isn’t always fair.” My own are close in age, have different strengths and pitfalls, and I’ve had to apply that adage many times.
Ime, there is no generalizing about what some kids deserve or can manage. .
My parents gave me and my brother the exact same amount in lump sum. To cover college and life cost. They do provide medical insurance so that does not come out of our pockets. I would say that is about as fair as it can get. Except my smarty pants brother doubled his money in 2 years in the stock market. So now he has over twice as much as me.
I haven’t read the entire thread but, clearly, as others have stated, there is no right or wrong and this is a very subjective topic. We gave each of our D’s $200 when they started to drive and that was to cover not only entertainment but also clothing. This continued at college and we told D1 to let us know if it wasn’t sufficient. It was until she joined a sorority and her expenses went up and we increased her allowance. I want my kids to have to think about how to budget but balance that with having enough money to participate with their friends and not have to skip things because they can’t afford it (we’re very fortunate that we can have this attitude). My kids have had summer jobs and, off and on, jobs during college. This was their money to do with as they please.
Our philosophy is that they have 4 years for college and this is, largely, at our expense. Once they graduate, we may help a bit with that first bill for their first apartment or some other basics but they are then on their own. So far, with 2 down and one to go, this has worked well for us. One may go back to grad school in another year or two and we’ll have to revisit.
For her first three years in college, my D had a credit card on our account. She never spent more than we thought was reasonable, and she always called to ask permission before buying something large or out of the ordinary. A few months ago a light bulb went off in my head and I realized that she’s a year from graduation and using a credit card for which she did not receive or pay the bill was not teaching her budgeting or money management, so we transitioned her to a debit card. Right now her account is full from last semester’s excess scholarship refund and her summer earnings, so we haven’t made a deposit yet, but when school starts and she’s working fewer hours we plan to put a couple hundred dollars a month into her account. That would cover food, gas, books, entertainment and incidentals. We pay her rent, insurance, and cell phone directly, and she has a scholarship for her tuition. We would also pay any big item (like 4 new tires last semester!). I see little benefit to her living the starving, deprived college student existence I did many years ago because we can easily afford to subsidize her. She does understand the value of a dollar, and I can see that she’s more aware of expenses with her debit card than she was with the credit card. I wish we had made that transition earlier. I think there are many “right” ways to handle finances for college kids, and a lot depends on the student and on the family’s financial situation.
The problem with giving each kid the exact same lump sum amount for college is that at least in Georgia the cost of college is rising between 3 and 9% each year. So if I was to give my younger kids the exact same amount then my current 11th and 9th graders wouldn’t have the option to go to the same college as their brother who is a Junior in College. Instead we have said we will pay for exact same things at a (instate) public college or if they get a really good OOS scholarship for all of them. It’s not their fault that they are younger and costs are going up.
To me, personally, clothing is different. I took them shopping and funded paying for their clothing when they came home on breaks. Absent an unusual situation, they wouldn’t have needed to buy clothing at college. (They might have chosen to buy a t-shirt for a campus event; that was out of their money.) It wouldn’t have worked for me to give a clothing allowance. Frankly I just used local discretion when it came to buying them clothes – hey, let’s go shopping and get you loaded up for the year with whatever you need. I didn’t see a need to equalize spending on them for that, so long as everyone was set with their wardrobes.
I am not giving my student an allowance. We pay for room and board, tuition, books, travel to and from home. They have all their baptism/birthday/Christmas money that has accumulated in their savings account. They can use that for an extras. I expect them to replenish it by working over the summer. That is the way it worked for me and i think it worked well. It makes them learn to value money.
“I’m not giving my kid an allowance” is kind of a meaningless stance from people who simply can’t afford to. You can’t give money you don’t have. To me, the more interesting q is - if you could, would you?
I haven’t read the entire thread. One thing H and I did was to have our kids provide us with a list of potential expenses. This varies due to different factors such as where the school is located, how much laundry costs at a particular school, etc. We started at the lower end as it is easier to increase the amount if they needed more money, but harder to cut back if a child is spending too much.
Pizzagirl, I think many of the people saying they don’t give an allowance could, but choose not to. I’m not wealthy, I did give my kids an allowance in high school, but I choose not to in college. I really think they should live on a budget and that they should work in the summer and/or during the school year. They have a meal plan, they wouldn’t starve, and I believe that if they want coffees and sushi and t-shirts, they have to buy them with their own money.
I want my kids to have fun while in college, but they have to take some responsibility too.
We gave our son $100 for the month last year, as he had a meal plan, lived on campus and did not have a car. He usually used more than that $100, so the difference was coming from his savings. He is also responsible for his fraternity costs.
This year, he has a small meal plan, so we will supplement him with an average of $70 a week. That way, he can go out to eat or if he is smart, go shopping, spending some money on groceries and cook for himself. He’s living in his fraternity’s house, and it has a lovely kitchen complete with dishwasher. We also supplied some essentials like toilet paper and toiletries, along with some cleaning staples and of course, snack food. I try to send him a gift card or two a month so he can treat himself to dinner out. He also got a part-time job to pay for his dates (he has had a steady girlfriend for five months) and maintenance on the car he is driving. We keep him on our insurance, but he will need to help pay a portion since it is quite expensive.
As for our older son, I know we gave him $100 a week his final two years for groceries, as he was not on a meal plan and lived off campus. He admits that he did not do well with the money or using it wisely. Now, he is a second-year law student and loves mint.com to track his expenses. We do not give him money, as he lives on his own, but I do send him a gift card or two a month … and he loves when I come and visit as I bring food like ziti and BBQ that he can freeze.
This thread is “fun” to read. It looks like the definition of “allowance” is different for everybody. To some, allowance includes laundry, toiletries and other incidentals. To some it includes books and money to shop some clothes. And on and on.
For us, we pay everything that are “school related”: Tuition, fees, board and lodging, PE fees, books. We also paid for travel. For our daughter’s first semester, we only give her about $50/month but she has money on her savings and checking account from graduation gifts and past earnings. Before we dropped her off, we took her shopping for clothes (winter clothes mostly since we are from SoCal), toiletries, laundry supplies, breakfast foods, snacks, etc. She didn’t come home fall break and Thanksgiving break and she spent these breaks on her friend’s house so we gave her “extra” money that she used for shopping, etc.
Second semester, we stopped giving her “allowance”. We are full pay and she’s not eligible for work study but she found a job on campus. She was making about $500 a month.
After all the money we spend in our kids’ tuition, room and board, I am not sure if it is really worth it to skim on books. I would prefer for my kids to buy books as soon as possible instead of waiting until they could afford it. Even though I told my kids that I would pay for their books, they bought/rented books online instead of paying retail.
