<p>Anyone remember POIH’s threads about whether giving his DD $750/mo allowance was enough? :)</p>
<p>"
I’ll list a couple for now:</p>
<ul>
<li>somebody who petitions to have their $200 a month allowance raised"</li>
</ul>
<p>What if the person presented a budget or some other extenuating circumstance? For example, my daughter sees a physician periodically for a health issue. Now, she is in a setting where she can walk into town to do so, but what if her doctor were further away and she needed to take a cab and it ate substantially into her allowance? That would be a valid legitimate reason to potentially ask for an increase. </p>
<p>Look, Insomniatic, it’s clear you come from a certain socioeconomic class. You seem unable to process the concept of having more without assuming “spoiled.” that says far more about you than you realize. There’s an element of envy and jealousy that other kids have it easier than you did. Well, it’s all relative. S goes to school with the children of a huge movie star, a national news anchor and a major performing artist. Those kids undoubtedly have more wealth and privilege than he could fathom – I’m sure they have access to private jets, etc. So? That doesn’t make them spoiled. That makes them people with private jets. </p>
<p>-" anybody that gets an allowance in college (I am not talking about the occasional dinner out, but spending money for movies, concerts, etc. should be earned)"</p>
<p>No. I’m not going to have my kid take away a job from a kid who NEEDS that money to stay in school. How wrong. Anyway, what do you care if I’m willing to find something such that my kid can go to the movies, etc on my dime? What’s it to you?</p>
<p>My D visited my S recently at his campus. They went downtown and had a fun day doing various touristy things. I said to them – enjoy a nice dinner on me, use the card. It gives me PLEASURE to treat my kids that way. Deal with it.</p>
<p>This is going to go over like a ton of bricks…</p>
<p>I intend to give my D spending money in addition to her meal plan. Not a huge amount (likely 200/mo) and she can spend or save it up for larger fun weekends. My theory is and always has been - work hard/play hard and when in school busting your a** (and playing a varsity sport), you don’t have time for a job and getting the grades I expect so I will help you there - this only lasts as long as she holds up her end - get the grades!</p>
<p>Mm, you can do what you want with your money, I don’t care. However, I disagree that you don’t have time for a job, sport, and good grades.</p>
<p>Exactly. I agree with you. I also want my kids to have some fun money.</p>
<p>and some fun time - all work and no play…</p>
<p>Insomniatic - I got $100/month 25 years ago when I was in college. I didn’t “live large” - I went out for pizza with friends, went to movies, maybe bought a new lipstick or magazine or so every now and then, bought extra toiletries if I ran out, etc. Sorry, $200/month today doesn’t seem all that lavish to me. the world is broader than your socioeconomic level, and living above your level is not “spoiled.”</p>
<p>Yes, all of those things :).</p>
<p>We live in a transitional world. In our world college students are neither children nor are they yet adults. We pay for our child’s college tuition, fees, room and board. We expect her, in return, to work hard on her studies and to work a summer job or internship, along with a VERY part-time campus job. We expect her to use a portion of the fruits of her labor to pay for books and personal expenses while at college. We do not provide an allowance. We have been known to send a check now and then along with a reminder to have some fun now and then. We’ve even been known to hand our daughters our credit card on occasion to take a friend out to dinner on us. </p>
<p>This is our world. Most of our neighbors live elsewhere and prefer that their children take out loans to finance their education. They are more liberal than we are in terms of spending money for their kids on cars, vacations and clothes. Some of our better compensated neighbors pay for college, allowances, cars, clothes and Spring Break! That’s OK. To each their own. That’s my public stance anyway. Helps to keep the peace.</p>
<p>definitely not a fan of taking out loans for anything except a house…</p>
<p>"
I understand, but it is not NORMAL for a parent to give their child a $200 a month allowance in college.</p>
<p>Ask 100 parents. I would say 95% don’t give their child a $200 a month allowance. I can even bet most don’t even give any type of allowance to their kids in college."</p>
<p>So what? What should what people in different economic brackets than I do relevant to what I should do?</p>
<p>My h runs a small business. The majority of his employees are sending their kids to community college and buying them secondhand, beater cars since that’s all they can afford. Does that mean that’s what I should do, too? No, there’s nothing wrong with comm college – but why should their income constraints be relevant to me?</p>
<p>this is another thing - my D has grown up in a diverse socioeconomic high school and her college will very likely be the same - I feel she will hit mid-range and I am very okay with that. She’s a very thrifty kid and I have always been grateful and glad.</p>
<p>D2 asked me if it would make sense to raise her allowance because of inflation. We started giving D1 that amount when she was a freshman in high school. It was 9 years ago. I think D2 may have a valid point.</p>
<p>Neither one of my kids worked while in high school because of their EC. I thought it was important for D1 to work in college in order to gain some work experience to be ready for future internships. My deal with her was if she worked than I would continue with the allowance. If she didn’t then she would need to live off her savings. It worked out well for her because interviewers did ask her about her job on campus.</p>
<p>We decided to give our kids an allowance in high school that was more than just entrainment money because we wanted to teach them to manage a budget. They used the money to buy gifts,special toiletries, haircut, going out…If you added it all up in a month, it wasn’t like they had that much extra money. It meant they had to figure out how many times they could afford to go out on weekends vs going out to lunch off campus. If they had a lot of birthday presents to buy that month then they couldnt go out as often. They were also told to put some money away. D1 was very disciplined, she figured out how much she could afford as her mad money and how much she wanted to save. She said she didn’t feel guilty in blowing her mad money. She is making her own money now, and she is still like that. She figured out how much she could have as her mad money, and if it’s not spent by end of month, she’ll treat herself to something special - a dress, dinner, spa treatment. </p>
<p>In my opinion, it is just as important to teach kids how to enjoy spending money as well as virtue of saving money. It is not good to spend it all or more than what you have, but at the sametime, never spending (wasting) a dime is not a way to live either. It is a balance.</p>
<p>I’ve found my kid is much more frugal when I say, here is $1000, for your expenses for the month, rather than when she was younger and she would come to me for whatever she needed.</p>
<p>I may live to regret posting, but coming back to the main topic before it was hijacked, my s’s always had one of my credit cards for emergencies and for things we said we would pay for (eg books). That said, both s’s for the mostpart chose to pay for their own books, would then resell them to either other students, to the bookstore or on line and keep the funds, which was fine by us. Rarely, if ever, did they use our card, and never without our knowledge or permission. Older s benefitted in his credit history from being on my account when he went to buy a car. I think the banking/credit laws have changed about that (the car dealer laughed that he had a credit history back to when he was 2 yrs old, and no, his credit/identity was not stolen by someone else) but it was very beneficial. Younger s still has one of our cards for emergencies, as his credit card currently has, by his chosing, a limit that could preclude him from making a large purchase if he needed to. So we are happy to provide the back up for him. He is our son. It is our right and our priviledge. Ditto for the allowance they had in college. How much we gave our kids is our choice. Its none of any one elses business and we do not have to explain or defend it to anyone.</p>
<p>D1 has a credit card that’s in our name. (she is the only one that carries a card on that account, so we know it’s all her charges). She is allowed to use it to run errands for us or for purchases that we pay otherwise pay for, but aren’t around. </p>
<p>I don’t think she’s abused it, however H is the one that reviews & pays the cc bills. </p>
<p>She’s in a campus apartment next year and we haven’t figured out her meal plan. One option is we buy a 75 or 90 meal plan that gives her 5-6 meals/week (ie dinner) in the dining hall and we allow her to use the cc at the campus center for lunch, as we calculate that it will be cheaper per meal than taking the next higher meal plan. She will also be able to use it at the grocery store, which again will be cheaper than the meal plan.</p>
<p>Having read this thread, I have to say that talking money is almost as controversial as talking about religion or politics. What works for one family is anathema to another.</p>
<p>All of my kids have an emergency credit card. They understand what it is for. When S2 brought his car in for maintenance and it was hundreds of dollars over what we expected, he put it on there. If he put dinners out with friends, I would be outraged. </p>
<p>With texting, cell phones and email, if my college aged kids needed cash because their funds in their debit card were low, they could let me know and I would almost instantly transfer money into their account. We all had an established budget each month and I won’t say that number, because apparently that is also a controversial topic. </p>
<p>I am impressed with how many folks never carry a balance for their credit cards. I wish I was that fortunate. We lived mostly credit card debt free for years, and then with extended job loss and wage reductions, started carrying one, again. It’s hard to dig out of, but there are some plusses to using cards as has been stated before - convenience and earning miles (especially if kid is going to school far away).</p>
<p>^^We’ve been one of those families that has been fortunate enough to almost never carry a credit card balance over the past 20 years. Everyone of my sisters and most of our friends carries debt. What worked for us was keeping one and only one credit card. My wife also has a debit card. She keeps telling me to get one but I already have to remember enough passwords, codes and PIN numbers.</p>
<p>While we’ve kept the cards to a minimum we are about to do as you’ve done and help get our younger daughter a credit card for emergencies along with a strict admonition that if you don’t have a true emergency you don’t use it.</p>
<p>I just had to look this morning didn’t I …</p>
<p>Over coffee I’m chuckling at the concept of ‘normal’ (as in the majority) being used in this discussion. Anyone who is on CC is by that simple fact not normal (in the majority). Those that spend the time to find CC, participate in CC, get worked up over topics on CC…are already, by definition, outside of the ‘normal’ circle on a venn diagram. ;)</p>
<p>^^^^jealous your morning coffee starts so late!</p>