<p>How closely do you watch your students bank balance? How much independence with regard to how money is spent? </p>
<p>We provide spending money in addition to other college expenses. Last semester our freshman stayed close to the dorms and didnt spend a lot of money. This semester, he is spreading his wings and going through the money at a much faster rate. His meal plan provides 10 meals a week; the others are purchased. However, its not the food I am concerned with.</p>
<p>With the ability to view electronically, I am finding it hard not to monitor and wonder about his spending habits. In todays world of debit cards and electronic transfers, its easy to check on a daily basis. I know there will be times when poor financial decisions will be made, maybe even poor purchase decisions. </p>
<p>How do you deal with your students spending money? Do you provide an allowance by the semester, by the month? Do you monitor how it is used? Do you address questionable decisions or am I too much of a helicopter parent?</p>
<p>We told him how much money there was - we put it in a joint account. Occasionally we wonder what he's spending it on. Sometimes we ask him out of curiosity, mostly we don't. If he runs out it's his problem.</p>
<p>BTW it's mostly his own hard-earned money anyway.</p>
<p>We pay DD's tuition, room, board & books. Everything else is on her -- sorority dues, Crew (Club) dues, off-campus dining, entertainment, etc., etc. As it is, I feel we are almost too generous. She has never asked for more $$, and certainly realizes she needs to monitor her spending. I was surprised by how much off-campus dining they do -- back in my day we hardly ever went out for meals. (Beer, however, was another story, but with $.10 beer nights, it didn't take much money.) She has access to "emergency money" via a debit card, but hasn't used it.</p>
<p>My 3 kids have all worked summers to save enough to pay for their own books and spending money. The money they earn is theirs to spend however they see fit. In my experience they are much more responsible about spending decisions when it is their own hard earned money and they know it has to last through two semesters. I usually send an occasional gift card in a care package - but they have not depended on us for spending money in many years (they worked summers while in high school as well).</p>
<p>We don't provide spending money. Our daughter has a work study job and we consider that her spending money. We do pay for 2 tanks of gas a month. Currently the WS job is MIA as the prof is waiting for some approvals and supplies for the next part of his project so we have sent her the odd $20. She has her own credit card and her own bank account neither of which we monitor. Both our kids had bank accounts from middle school that were linked to savings accounts so they learned how to keep track and balance their accounts. She also has one of our credit cards that she can use in emergencies and for anything medical. She is very sensible with money and is not the sort to think wanting a new pair of jeans constitutes an emergency so we feel quite comfortable letting her have one of our cards. If I were to provide an allowance I would just give a certain dollar amount and leave it to her how to spend it.</p>
<p>We don't give an allowance. We pay for all school expenses..tuition,room & board, books, fees. She is a little bit of a fashion diva so we get new clothes in the fall, just like when she was little, and then for Christmas and bdays. We talked about this after she graduated from HS and she got her first summer job. We told her upfront that she needed to save her $$$ as that would be her spending money for the entire school year. She learned to budget and came home with some still in her account. Yeah...I bet her biggest expense is eating out. The cafeteria food gets old after a while.</p>
<p>We look at her account occasionally but have yet to say anything to her about spending habits.</p>
<p>We do have a friend whose son is a senior. The mom is a banker and checks his account ALL the time. She was furious once when he bought a new video game and went ballistic on him! I vowed never to be like that and micro manage.</p>
<p>D makes her own spending money during the summer and Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks. She also usually has a small(8 hours/week)job on campus each year. We pay her tuition, room&board, books and fees. In the past, she has had to cut down on expenses before she built up her account again!</p>
<p>We don't give our freshman a spending allowance -- we pay tuition, room & board, she pays for everything else (including books) (although we paid for 99% of her linens and other dorm purchases and her computer). We don't have access to the checking account she has at a bank local to her school; I know my husband does look periodically at her bank account at home since it is connected to ours. He occasionally transfers money between accounts (for example, she used one of our credit cards to buy books at Amazon, and he went in and transfered the amount from her account to ours). I'm not too thrilled with this set-up, and I'm sure we'll phase out of that eventually.</p>
<p>The fact that she is spending her own money makes her extremely frugal, which is fine by me. Neither my husband nor I had spending money from our parents when we were in college, so we were both inclined to go this way.</p>
<p>She has a debit card connected to her account at home, and one of our credit cards which she knows is for emergency only.</p>
<p>Thanks experienced parents-I really needed your replies! This freshman mom doesn't want to be like the banker either!</p>
<p>I think we need to clarify what the allowance amount will be for the semester and have him be responsible for the balance. I have been hesitiant to do so because he needed to eat with it! </p>
<p>He too, has money from a summer job in savings, but to date we have not asked him to spend it. I agree this will help with his decision process.</p>
<p>We dealt with it by telling WashDadJr during his senior year in high school that we expected him to work during the summer (<em>blink</em>), and that as of graduation day his allowance ended (<em>blink</em> <em>blink</em>). We also added that starting in the summer after his freshman year in college he was going to pay for his car insurance (<em>blink</em> <em>blink</em> <em>blink</em>). He's starting to understand "growing up."</p>
<p>We opened Ds bank account before they were 18, so our names are on the account, it is very easy to see what they do.</p>
<p>One of my Ds is extremely responsible with money, I rarely look at her account as I am not worried.</p>
<p>Another D has never been good with money, just has trouble making things work all the way to the end of the week/month/term. Sometimes I would look, but I really did not want to see it :eek: Her UG years were full of money talks and she did end up having accumulated some credit card debt, just from wanting to keep up with the other girls who seemed to spend quite freely, which she paid off on her own. She is much better now, though it is still not easy, she just has not got a cheap mind set, so yes, I did look to make sure there were no problems developing which would affect her credit or cause stupid complications- like bounced checks, etc. That did happen once and I helped her see how to fix it and understand the potential consequences long term.</p>
<p>Now that she is on her own, with her own cell (so glad not to be fighting over her little overages on our plan) her own car insurance, her own place on her own credit, she is very glad she had those parental checks and balances so that her credit is excellent- it is up to her to be mature enough to maintain it, but at least she is not starting in a big expensive hole!</p>
<p>thanks somemom - I guess it's a balancing act between micro managing and watching them get into financial trouble. Thanks for sharing your family story - especially one with an encouraging ending!</p>
<p>We have never monitored our ds's bank accounts and recently transferred his UGM investment accounts into his name so I do not get periodic account statements on these anymore either.</p>
<p>He's a very frugal person(like me), so I do not see where this will be a problem. And as grad costs are looming next year I have confidence that he will be conserving those investment funds for that.</p>
<p>Late to the thread, we don't do a "spending allowance" either. We pay room/board/tuition/books. Kids work for their spending money. S1 worked all summer before this year and worked through the fall semester. He's "not working" this winter semester but he worked hard this fall to save enough to slide to spring. He'll work again this summer. He's being very frugal this winter, taking the bus, not driving his car, eating on the cheap, etc. but it's his decision and I don't think it hurts the kids one bit to be alittle broke. They won't have much disposable income after they graduate either!</p>
<p>We provided a monthly allowance (modest) when he was a freshman. We made a lump sum by semester when he was a sophomore. (Gave him more practice managing his own funds). Starting junior year, we did not provide an allowance but expected him to use his summer earnings savings for "walking around money." He does not have a meal plan anymore, so we deposited to his account each semester the amount of meal dollars he would have had (less the obnoxious overhead, so a savings to us).</p>
<p>Yes, I can see online how/how fast he is spending money. But, we made conscious efforts to teach our son financial smarts and good spending/saving habits from when he was a little boy. We did this by talking and by modeling.</p>
<p>It worked. He is careful, frugal, thoughtful about spending decisions. He has had money left over every period. He has scrimped day to day so that he could afford the air fare to visit friends at another college.</p>
<p>IMO, it is helicoptering to bring up spending decisions to the kid. They need to learn to manage their own money. The best way for them to learn this is to live with the consequences of their decisions. If he doesn't know that there will be no infusions from you to correct for "I spent it all, I need more," you need to let him know that. If you do plan to add more $$ if he spends foolishly, I think that is a worse mistake than helicoptering, because it will prevent him from developing good financial management skills.</p>
<p>ccreader- I guess the guideline for me was let her make mistakes that affect her and will teach her; I interfered and corrected her before she did anything that would hurt her long term.</p>
<p>By using her credit card to ease her budget woes, she hurt herself when she had to work all summer to pay it off; by making sure she made her minimum payment on time every time, I made sure her future credit was not harmed; while not causing a big fight over the charges. Hopefully she learned some benefits of deferred gratification that summer ;)</p>
<p>Also, DD bounced one check and I went and paid it (took the money from her account to do so) but it had to be dealt with quickly as there is a national reporting system and this can hurt you and my name was still on that account :eek: That is when I learned of her CC debt, as she had overdraft that should have protected her, when the check bounced instead, I knew we had a problem. I avoided some of the emotional issues and teenage type arguements by focusing on the long term issues and how it would affect HER not ME....now 2-3 years later, it seems to have worked and she is truly aware and grateful to have outstanding credit- that card is paid off and the credit limit raised 50% since then (which is still reasonably low)</p>
<p>I did remove my name from that account then as she was old enough to have her own account and I did not want to risk anything affecting me if she did not learn her lesson then.</p>
<p>I am really surprised at the number of parents still giving their college kids allowances! At what age do you expect them to earn their own money? What do they do with their summer earnings?</p>
<p>For my first two years of college, my parents provided spending/food money on an as-needed basis ("When you run out, ask for more"). I rarely spent any money, other than on food (and I tried to be frugal with that) because I felt horribly guilty about them providing the money. I suspect that if I had spent a lot they would have started putting a cap on it!</p>
<p>Starting the summer after my sophomore year, I paid for food and other on-top-of-tuition-and-housing spending myself with money I earned. When I was asked if I needed more money, I said I didn't need any more as I was earning my spending money myself. I liked it better that way, and felt more free to do with it as I pleased.</p>