I have also never understood the “skin in the game” so they understand and take seriously the cost. If they otherwise wouldn’t, I think you have other problems. I had my kids pay the incidentals and books because it was doable–they could get jobs and that money should go to their costs, because why not? It was to help them. But I never for a second considered that they wouldn’t otherwise take their educations seriously.
Similar to @juniebug , we told our daughter we would pay for the highest instate public costs. She knew the costs of where she wanted to attend and the range of merit scholarships. Her ACT put her just below the higher amount. She took some practice tests and increased her score a few points to beat the target. Now the costs are below instate (difference may go towards grad school if she chooses). She is paying for her books, sorority, and any other out of pocket costs with job money she earned through school and summers. We are still deciding how to handle our son, most likely the same .
We covered all of our daughter’s costs, although she certainly helped by choosing a school that offered her a full tuition scholarship. But we paid for her fees, books, housing, food, car, insurance, phone, etc. Any money she earned was hers to spend as she wished. I wasn’t worried about her having “skin in the game” because I knew she valued her education and would work hard whether she was contributing financially or not. And she did. We were in a financial position that we could pay for everything without any contribution from her; our expectations of her contribution would have been different had that not been the case.
We offered to pay for the equivalent to 4 years at the state flagship, and if the choice was a no-merit school, we would loan the difference (and might forgive it at some point, but that’s our secret). Our sensible child not only chose a school where merit brought it close to the level where we would pay, but is now throwing a wrinkle in that he may graduate in 3 years, and he wants us to pay him. No he’s not planning on going to law school, but it seems he has a way with contracts.
Hmmm. @garland - I guess it’s not so much that I have a concern that our daughter wouldn’t “take her education seriously” if she weren’t contributing towards the cost of funding it, but I think it is entirely appropriate (and consistent with our family’s values) that as a young adult she contribute to this experience that will shape up to have such import for her own future. I’ve not asked other parents about this because we have a “problem”, but instead, because new as we are to this stage of parenting, we are trying be thoughtful in how we approach these next steps
in supporting her in the best way that we can.
We could have funded her spring break trip to the Bahamas, too, but elected not to as we thought it a valuable experience for her that she make a choice about what are the kinds of things/experiences she values enough to work such that she can afford them. YMMV.
Our kids paid spending money, books, and any expenses related to unpaid internships should they choose to accept them (and the cost of living for paid internships where they couldn’t live at home, too). I funded plane tickets for breaks (and if they wanted to fly somewhere for spring break instead of home, I paid for the ticket, but no other expenses for the vacation – one kid did it once). I covered everything else.
We have 2 kids in college now. We’ll have 3 in college in the fall. We’re handling each one uniquely.
Kid 1: Received a full tuition scholarship plus another smaller renewable one to a private uni. We also get a small amount of financial aid. We pay everything for her except incidentals. She is planning on going to medical school, so we didn’t ask her to take out any loans. She squirrels away any money she makes (not much) to use towards medical school/apartment start-up costs in the future.
Kid 2: received a small renewable scholarship. She chose to go to a local community college for the first two years so that she wouldn’t have to take out any loans. We pay for everything the scholarship doesn’t cover except for incidentals (although with her living at home, we end up paying for some of that, too). She is saving all her money to help pay for her last two years at a state school. She plans to go into education, so we didn’t want her to start off with any debt since her income will not be high (especially at first).
Kid 3: Currently has a full tuition scholarship to an in-state public (still waiting on other competitive scholarships). We will cover most of his other expenses. If he doesn’t get any more scholarships, we will ask him to take out the subsidized federal loan ($3500) this year since we’ll have three to pay for. He plans to go into engineering, and we feel it will be easy for him to pay such a small loan back quickly.
We have 6 kids total, and money is extremely tight for us, but we still feel it’s better for us to work a little extra and tighten our belts a little more to keep them out of serious debt. Our kids are very aware of what we are doing and are committed to keeping their grades up and keeping their scholarships. That’s enough “skin the game” for us.
Mine was fairly simply: I paid the bills that came from the college bursar-- the kids were expected to pay everything else on their own (from whatever savings they had plus earnings during college). Kids also were expected to take the maximum available to them in subsidized federal loans – I did not want them taking other loans.
The college bursar bill would be offset by the student loans. It included tuition, course fees, housing costs – and during the first year, the mandatory college meal plan. (Both my kids attended colleges that at the time mandated meal plans for freshmen only – so after the first year, food costs shifted to the kids. They did have cooking facilities so could prepare their own food much more economically).
No allowance.
I would definitely have sent money if the kids ran into trouble making ends meet, but that didn’t become an issue.
Both kids always worked during college, typically at multiple different part-time jobs – plus they were creative in figuring out extra ways to raise money.
My husband originally wanted my daughter to have “skin in the game” as well. He and I both had to finance a portion of our college educations, and he thought it was important. I was ok with that, as long as we kept her loans to a minimum. He felt we should offer to pay for the equivalent of State U, and she should cover the rest if she went elsewhere. Then when we got into the whole college search process, we learned how crazy college costs had gotten. We had an idea before, but we had no idea our EFC would be 1/3 of our gross income and that “meets full need” meant that they got to define your need.
Months later, and we’re looking at covering costs at schools she has good merit aid to, and making her take out loans if she chooses to attend a school with a higher cost. We expect her to get a summer job and use the money to cover incidentals and most likely expect her to hold down a 8-10 hour/week part time job to also help cover costs. With one exception - she’s up for a Stamps scholarship (full ride + money towards study abroad) at one school, and we’ve told her that if she gets that and chooses to attend there, we will provide her with a monthly stipend so she doesn’t have to work during the school year. Her job will be to work hard and make sure she meets the renewal criteria. She’s worked since the summer she was 15, and has contributed a lot towards her personal expenses (including clothes) and we don’t feel like her work ethic or ability to have “skin in the game” will be compromised if we reward her for all her hard work that resulted in scholarships.
@garvey, that is essentially how I couched it when I discussed things with my daughter. I had been giving her a very generous allowance during high school, in part because she attended high school in a different city from where we live – so she had a car and extra expenses associated with the commute. So when I first mentioned that there would not be an allowance when she got to college, it probably was something of a shock – or at least something she hadn’t thought about before.
But my view is that college is a transitional time between childhood (dependency) and adulthood (financial self-sufficiency) - and I expected the kids to take on increasing responsibilities for their own finances over time. As my kids had attended public schools, it was easy for me to point out how much of a financial burden I was taking on with college costs.
At least for me, the transition thing worked. They had jobs and were living independently and supporting themselves after college graduation; they even put themselves through grad school. So while it may have been somewhat scary to them at first, I think that it helped set the stage for future independence-- both because they got in the habit of equating paid work with paying for necessities of life like food and clothing as well as extras - and because the need to work through college resulted in them having strong work histories when they were preparing and sending out resumes as college seniors.
We set a budget for college cost that our kids knew we had to stick to. They are both attending on large merit scholarships and know they have to keep those scholarships to stay where they are. That’s their skin in the game. No one is taking loans. We pay tuition in excess of the scholarships, room, board, books, and necessities. They pay for their own fun, eating out, etc. Neither has a car.
The older one has had jobs and internships. She did not work freshman year but has worked every semester since. She paid all her own living expenses for the summer internship, and last semester also paid her own groceries once she was in an on campus apartment. This was voluntary on her part. We paid for the required and very minimal meal plan. She may also have paid some or all of her own books last semester. Now that her sister has started college as well, all her college related expenses are coming from her college fund. She knows she gets to keep anything that’s left when she graduates (it was an adequate, not huge amount). She’s been gradually taking more responsibility for herself by her own choice.
Second kid is a freshman. She has the same agreement with us. She’s currently working two jobs because she really wants a car and is trying to save for one. If anything, she feels guilty that we spend what we do on her education–appreciating the value of it isn’t a problem at all.
We haven’t had trouble with either kid as far as grades–they both are working very hard and doing well. The scholarships aren’t in any danger. We haven’t had trouble with them as far as spending either, but we knew their level of maturity and the nature of the relationship we had with each of them when they left for college and felt this was a reasonable way of handling things. If I had a different kid, I might make a different agreement.
I expect, at a minimum that my child pay for personal spending expenses and books. This will be true regardless of which school he chooses whether it is under or over our stated budget.However there is a caveat with the books in that we will cover the books for a certain GPA.
However if my child chooses a school that is over our stated budget and merit awards do not meet the gap then he will need to come up with the difference. There is a limit as to how much he can come up with on his own and that created the upper cap of total costs that he can look at.
If he chooses to have extra skin in the game for the school of his choice I do want to provide him with that option within reason.
I’m not sure how this question is really different from the original ‘money talk’. We came up with a budget amount that we would pay. If she goes over that budget, she can only do so up the the unsub student loan amount. When she picks a school, we expect to pay up to the annual published COA, or our budgeted amount, whichever is less. Incidentals like spring break travel is on her from savings.
“A big part of our interest in having her help with costs is so that she takes seriously how significant an investment of time, money, and effort college is. We’d like to see her have “some skin in the game,” as they say.”
Aaaaand this is where you lose me. My kids didn’t need to have " skin in the game" to take college seriously. We didn’t need them to worry about money and we didn’t want them to as some sort of lesson. Of course I understand that many families need their child to contribute. Nothing wrong with that. But the idea that there’s some virtue in making them pay when they have already proved themselves to be seious students. Nope. Don’t agree.
@maya54 couldn’t agree more…i paid for 100% of my school and would never put that on my kids…perfect way to get them to short their education
I think I have used the “skin in the game” metaphor before, but for me it is not so much about our son taking his education seriously (we have no qualms there), rather I think of it as part of helping our son transition to taking financial responsibility for his own life and get “launched.”
We expect our son to work during the summers (at the very least; we have also encouraged him to look for a job at school…). He is responsible for his books, travel, personal expenses, and some of his earnings do go into the tuition savings account, too. We also expect our son to continue applying for outside scholarships, as well.
@maya54 lol zero interest in the question of whether I’ve “lost” you or you “agree” with our family’s plan to have our working young adult contribute to cover her own expenses.
Also hilarious to read sanctimonious posts from parents whose children would NEVER not take seriously the grave import of their own educations…my more than 25 years as a teacher of high school seniors tells me some of you might be somewhat surprised to get a glimpse of your children “in action” - whether in high school or college.
My question had to do with how to involve children in the effort to cover the very significant costs associated with attending college. I’m very appreciative of the variety of responses I’ve received here.
@30socks - I guess this is a slightly different one from the one you pose in the sense that we already have an understanding with our daughter as to what is the budget (we will cover costs equivalent to what would be associated with attending our expensive flagship state school school). Whether she attends that school or goes someplace else, we expect that she will contribute - I was curious as to what this ends up looking like for other families. Do they ask that their kids just cover discretionary expenses? Books? Something else? Do kids receive an allowance? We are just thinking about what this next phase might look like, and are interested to hear how other families have structured these “arrangements.”
I’ve posted specifically as to this point already, but I’d add that my system of me paying the bill that comes from the bursar (to which student grants & loans were applied), and the kids being responsible for everything else was the easiest to manage. During my daughter’s first semester, her need-based grant was increased mid-semester, which resulted in the bursar giving her a refund check - so that caused some confusion – I told her she needed to return the refund and ask that it be applied to the following semester. But beyond that, I just had one bill to worry about and I wasn’t messing in my kids’ business or second guessing their choices.
Travel home varied – I was willing to pay for trips home breaks, but my kids often wanted to go elsewhere, so that was dealt with on an ad hoc basis. Sometimes I’d book a flight for them and pay, sometimes they would book their own flights. My daughter did an internship abroad one summer and paid the fare to get to her internship, but I paid for the return fare to her college campus. The one-way fare for her return was probably roughly equivalent to the round-trip domestic fare if she had come home that summer. But this travel thing is something of a different animal, and it has continued that I sometimes pay airfare, sometimes not, when the kids are flying in for family occasions & visits. It’s complicated by the accumulation of frequent flyer points over time.
Here’s the bottom line: there is nothing to ever prevent you as a parent from voluntarily picking up the tab for extra expenses along the way that are your kid’s responsibility – especially unanticipated expenses – so no real downside to the parent to passing a significant amount of responsibility to the kid. I know in my heart that if the kid runs into financial trouble, I’m going to help out… I just want the kids to try to figure it out on their own first. So if you have an idea of what your kid reasonably should be able to earn… it’s then fairly easy to allocate responsibility.
Our “skin in the game” talk came much earlier - before he even entered high school. He knew from the beginning that he needed to maintain high grades and test scores because his options were to chase high end merit aid or to commute to the local flagship as his 529 is not particularly impressive. The value of the scholarship to the university he will be attending is far more than he could have earned through employment so his number one priority in college will be to maintain that scholarship. We would like him to cover personal expenses through summer +/or part time employment. The scholarship and 529 combine to cover everything else.