My daughter has been accepted at a top liberal arts college near Los Angeles, she has also been accepted at top liberal arts colleges in the Northeast. We have had very generous financial aid packages from all the schools, but the eastern schools estimate annual travel costs near $400 which seems reasonable but the CA school budgets $1500 which seems unreasonably low. I’m the number cruncher in the family and would love for people with experience on the East/West travel costs to chime in. My gut feeling is that it costs closer to $3K for the year for a student to travel back and forth if you throw in the holidays.
Our kiddo went to college in CA. We live in CT. She came home for the Christmas break…and in the summer. She did NOT come home for Thanksgiving or spring break. The thanksgiving break was one week before finals…and it didn’t make sense for her to fly here…and then fly here again two weeks later. Spring breaks her college had community service trips and she did three. One year she went to a friend’s.
We had relatives in CA where she went for Thanksgiving.
So…we budgeted two round trip plane tickets…and that’s it.
We have a kid making the holiday trip now from near there …it’s about $450 round trip each time now. Figure $500.
Your kid can make 3 trips home a year for $1500. That should be plenty.
Go to Orbitz (or another travel website) and experiment with travel dates. For the first year, “buy” fares for the number of family members who will be accompanying your daughter for moving in. Fares around Christmas are not necessarily much more than those at other times of the year; fares at Thanksgiving are, because of the limited number of travel days, given when the holiday is and when businesses and colleges tend to have their Thanksgiving breaks. Decide whether you can afford to have your daughter come home at all at Thanksgiving and at spring break. Also do a little research on travel costs to and from the airport, at least at the college end.
You didn’t say where she would be flying from. If the LA area airport most convenient to her LAC is Ontario, then depending on where you’re coming from, it can be one of the better deals. $1500 / 6 = $250 each way, so that’s three round trips. A quick glimpse at kayak shows that you can get trips from the NYC area to ONT for under $200.
Yes…for your FAMILY budget purposes, you ight want to in life airfares for anyone accompanying your kiddo to college when she goes. BUT the colleges aren’t paying for family member travel…only the student. So there won’t be additional money added if you request it…for family members.
When our kid chose her across the country college it was with the clear understanding that she would come home for the long winter break and summer…and that was it. She understood this when she made her matriculation decision.
I will add a disclaimer…we did fly her to the east cost for two long weekends while she was in college, one was for her brother’s senior music recital (whichnwas a surprise for him and totally worth every penny we spent), and the other for a cousins wedding.
And we never once went to visit her when she was a student. It was too far, and too costly for a weekend visit. But she made lots of good friends…and was nicely “adopted” by other families on Parents Weekend.
Yes, I know the colleges won’t pay for family member travel. But I think this needs to be taken into account when determining the true cost of a college for a particular student and his or her family.
D1 went to college in southern California. I saw her school twice: when we moved her in before fall of her first year and at graduation. It would have been nice to visit more often, but I thought it was indefensible for me to spend money on airfare from and to our home in the Midwest, given our family finances at the time. If the OP wants to be able to visit the child in college, those travel costs should not be ignored.
The college may have the same travel estimate for OOS students whether they are in Denver, Chicago, or Miami, and the cost to travel won’t be the same. A smaller town will usually cost more. If your student is flying NYC to LA, the tickets might be cheaper because there are a lot of airlines and many airport choices on both ends to provide competition on rates. If she’s flying from Virginia to LA? Might be more expensive.
On the other hand, she might use every bit of that $400 if she needs to get to Maine a few times or Vermont, or upstate NY.
My daughter flies from Denver to Orlando and it’s usually about $200-250 round trip because it is two major markets.
The estimate seems about right to me. My kid flies most of the way across the country for school and we spend about that much.
3 roundtrips per year - back and forth for the beginning/end of school runs about $400, Thanksgiving break (always a little more) $500, Winter break/Christmas $400, ground transportation around $50 each round trip.
Another thing to budget for is a $100-200 for summer storage needs.
For $3000 a year…I think you could buy three first class seats…round trip coast to coast.
I think colleges budget for coach seats 
I’ve observed two main schools of thought on this.
A- we are going to pretend our child is one hundred miles from home and not three thousand (or whatever the right number is.) We are going to try and get the kid home for Grandma’s birthday, cousin’s engagement party, aunt’s baby shower, every holiday both major and minor, and will have a fit when we realize we can’t afford it, or kid can’t afford to miss another Friday morning chem lab, or kid has no interest in said baby shower, or the airline took what was a nonstop flight and now routes it through Charlotte (Charlotte- that’s not even on the way!) or Detroit (why Detroit?)
B- Kid is several thousand miles away. We put kid on a plane to move in-- he/she will use Amazon and the local Walmart to fill in on anything he/she needs for the dorm room. We will see kid at Xmas and when he/she comes home for summer break. We are all looking forward to commencement when we’ll get to see the favorite haunts, meet the professor who did so much for kid, help drag the couch to Salvation Army and pack up the room to ship home.
I think you need to figure out which camp you are in. You can get lucky and find cheap tickets, and then discover that one bad snowstorm delays your kid for two days plus chews up hundreds of dollars in extra costs. You can get lucky and consistently figure out the best flight which rarely has delays but kid misses it before Xmas because a final exam ran late and she missed the campus shuttle so you end up paying extra to get the kid on a full flight by paying for the “premium” seat.
You will save your D tons of aggravation by figuring out where you are mentally ahead of time, and having an honest dialogue about it.
One more thing to consider…in 2006 when our iidmatarted college…I could easily find $250 round trip tickets on Southwest or American for her cross country trips. By the time she graduated…it was in the $350-400 range for the same tickets.
And now…like I said…DS books flights in the $450 range round trip (but to be fair…he never looks for a bargain and often books at the last minute).
Anyway…,I agree with @blossom.we were in Camp B…with two exceptions noted above. Kid knew it before she chose to matriculate.
But also keep in mind…airfares likely will go up.
Our DS is going east coast from Texas and the whole family will not be able to drop him off or visit. He will need to stay there for Thanksgiving and spring break or get adopted, volunteer, learn to ski, something. I’ve seen where some parents purchase major tickets well in advance to get the best prices. Also, I have a airline credit card with SW and will be cycling some purchases on it to earn some free flights. The accepted students day trip alone put me a 75% for a flight.
It is a big hassle to travel home for Thanksgiving across time zones. I would assume they won’t do that. So you have winter break, summer, and maybe spring break round trips. I’d say $1500 is plenty. Check out Southwest, too. 2 bags checked free.
- Southwest
- San Diego to Buffalo
- xmas and spring break $150 round trip booked 3 months in advance
- Get finals schedule ASAP and book at that time.
Southwest often requires stops cross country. I have often found them not to be the cheapest or most convenient for my kid’s route lately. But the 2 bags checked are sure handy when transported skis.
I find the cheapest fares come from booking about 2 months out. Buying too far ahead can be pricey sometimes in my experience.
My kids used Southwest primarily because of the good rebooking policies.
We did check fares in advance.
D is in first year of college in an obscure location. Our home base is also off the beaten track 2 time zones away. She previously attended boarding school in an equally difficult location.
Travel costs are very similar to OP’s estimate although FinAid awards do not reflect this. Sometimes we have frequent flier miles. Often the cheapest fares are not doable, having too short of layovers or requiring a teenage girl to catch a cab at 3 am, arriving at midnight when the school is 1.5 hours away from the airport, etc. Definitely look into what any school offers in the way of airport transportation.
D and I are very close and at her dad’s house she has 2 young siblings. When she is home her time is split between her dad’s & my house. If she only came home at Christmas & summers, it would have a huge impact on all her family relationships.
So I bite the bullet, take out loans, and bring her home Thanksgiving (9 day break), Christmas, and Spring Break as well as summer. Some schools are closed from Thanksgiving till after New Years. I was hoping she would end up at one of those but no such luck.
She will be gone from the nest soon enough. I have older kids that I just flat out could not do this for. While I have no regrets, I am making sacrifices (& have the ability to do so now) to do it differently for the last child.
When DS and I went for accepted students day in a small city, I walked him through travel methods, knowing he would have to go by himself. I collected the cards from two car service providers the hotel recommended and will be instructing DS to use them when the school/public transport is not available, since the price is the same as a cab and they don’t have Uber there yet. I already consider one guy to be my personal chauffer, he just doesn’t know it yet.
If it hasn’t been pointed out yet, you may not be able to book flights very early, sometimes finals schedules aren’t known until near the end of the semester. I know a few people who couldn’t buy tix when the good sales were on.
Consider looking into an airline miles credit card. We’re west coasters with a kid in WI who flies into Chicago. We sometimes pay cash for flights when they’re cheap, but, more often than not, we use miles now.
@OHMomof2 We don’t worry about that issue: we just buy her ticket for the day she needs to be out of the dorms. But, she’s at an LAC where finals span only Friday through Tuesday and she needs to be out by Wednesday. Oftentimes she has no final but still has papers and projects that are due by the end of the finals time slot for those classes.