<p>I agree that you won’t see cost savings :(. My youngest has lived off campus since sophomore year, so we now have year round housing costs. However she also really enjoys sharing a house. The girls share prep for meals, books & now they want my advice on growing a vegetable garden for the summer!</p>
<p>
How very “granoly” of you EK4. 
Full disclosure, we have a large herb garden with some veges and compost our scraps.</p>
<p>Because of big trees & other house, not sure where their sun will be. They are going to start with containers ( their soil is awful- I had to chisel the glacial till away to plant daffodils last fall) I think if they stick with herbs & plum or cherry tomatoes they will be successful.</p>
<p>My oldest is also going to have a small plot. She lives in a small one story apt complex & management apparently encourages tenants to grow what they want. I brought her some starts that are from the same raspberries that my grandparents brought from Missouri 70 yrs ago. :)</p>
<p>My grocery bill is cut in half with my twins gone and my laundry room is much emptier. I find we are eating out a lot more which probably is one reason why my grocery bill is lower. It was just too expensive for five of us to eat out much but now with just three of us and one still eating off the kids menu we can eat out much more.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>So, now your “going out” bill is higher. </p>
<p>I think that happens a lot. You may spend less at the market, but more at restaurants.</p>
<p>Yes…laundry would be much less with twins gone. :)</p>
<p>Our son will likely be living in the dorm at a school about 30 miles away. We’ve decided to spring for the dorm even if he could commute and save us some $. Running the numbers on gas, he would use a tank a week (60$ in CA). Over nine months of commuting, that alone = approx $2000. Spending 2 hours daily in the car also makes little sense. So we are going with the dorm/no car for freshman year. He can spend his time immersed in campus life, instead of sitting alone in an automobile. And the $2k gas savings seems a true offset. Frankly, I think it will be more than that. </p>
<p>We’ve run an anaylsis on food costs, also. We estimate savings of approx $50 a week with him living on campus. I don’t know about the rest of you, but our teenage boy goes through <em>huge</em> amounts of milk, cereal, yoghurt, fruit, etc. Over nine months this could offset costs by approx $450. </p>
<p>We won’t have travel cost b/c the school is close by and I drive by when commuting myself–so there won’t be many extra trips to pick him up when he wants to come for weekends. </p>
<p>I guess this points to what someone else noted: it’s not one size fits all. I don’t doubt that dorm costs will always exceed home costs, but the degree of offset depends on specific circumstances. For us, I think the offset at home (including the car/gas) will be around
$3000, and that’s significant enough to make dorm cost manageable. </p>
<p>Son is over-the-moon about possibility that he’ll live on campus and I’m glad we did the most thorough analysis possible before ruling it out based on costs, alone. The skyrocketing cost of gasoline in CA really changed the equation for us, as commuting becomes a very expensive proposition.</p>
<p>These are all very useful ideas to think about. Thanks everyone.</p>
<p>Ackk! I fixed my post with an edit, but it didnt save.
Food savings are likely to be $50 per week/200$ a month for 9 months =$1800. He plans to work weekends and not come home most of the time. </p>
<p>Food savings + commuting/gas costs we won’t incur if he lives on campus = $3800 savings to offset dorm expenses. That’s quite significant and we are glad we didn’t rule out the on-campus option reflexively, before running the numbers.</p>