<p>Back to original question. My oldest daughter goes to McGill. Talk about banking nightmares. It is impossible to pay bills in Canada from a U.S. bank account. I had to present myself at a Canadian bank and literally beg them to open an account for me. My daughter also opened an account at the same Canadian bank - that way I can transfer funds from my Canadian Account to her account. Also, if I send a check from the US to deposit in my account in Canada - it takes FIVE weeks to clear. So I've gotten in the habit of giving my daughter cash to take back to school to deposit in my account. To top all of this off - the Canadian dollar strengthened against the US dollar literally the day my daughter was accepted into McGill. The Canadian "discount" is now a lot lless than it was two years ago.
Last thing - I got all of my kids a Visa Buxx account. <a href="http://www.visabuxx.com%5B/url%5D">www.visabuxx.com</a> I can easily tranfer money into each of my kids' visa buxx cards from my citibank account. There are limits on how much each kid can take out per day. I use it to pay their allowances and for emergency payments to them if they or I am traveling. Even works for my daughter in Canada but there are limits to how much funding can be put into it. It's a visa card but really a debit card.</p>
<p>I've gotten VisaBuxx cards for my kids also and it's worked out extremely well. I set up an allowance schedule for each and the cash is transferred from my Visa card (I don't have my own Citibank account) every month on my schedule, or I can deposit more when needed. It works as a Visa card but draws down from the deposited total.</p>
<p>Re: banks: I have a bank at home and a bank at school - works well enough.</p>
<p>Re: spending money. My parents paid tuition, room, board, and books, and everything else was on me. I had to earn my own money. I think I went through about $300 or so during my freshman year (did the poor college student thing), and went through a lot more than that in following years. Had car on campus ($400/year for parking), paid for gas and repairs (oh, those $500 repair bills and $1000 tune-ups); went out with friends to dinner sometimes; bought my own clothes. The things that will really drain a budget tend to be car expenses and clothing (not that I'm a big clothes person, and I keep them forever, but it's still expensive).</p>
<p>Also buy happy-cow milk (don't drink much milk, so I figure that the extra $$ for happy cows really doesn't add up to much - maybe $20/year?) and happy-chicken eggs (which costs about an extra $1 per year for the one or two cartons I get). </p>
<p>I'm vegetarian, so my meals at restaurants almost never cost very much - it's really unusual for an entree to break $11 or $12. Light drinker - only a glass of wine - hum, maybe there is a reason my boyfriend doesn't mind treating me. ;)</p>
<p>Groceries cost about $30 or so per week, but will cost more when I cook for the gourmet group on campus or for aforementioned b/f - maybe $50/week. </p>
<p>Cell has always been on my own. It's my only phone line though, and it's cheaper than a landline + long distance.</p>