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It’s not “discretionary” spending, its just the student’s share of the responsibility for college costs. My kids both attended college that mandated a meal plan the first year but not thereafter – so I paid for meals in year #1 via the plan, after that, food costs were on their shoulders as well. I certainly didn’t consider food a “discretionary” expense.</p>
<p>I have to work to earn money for “necessary” as well as “discretionary” expenses; that’s just part of being adult. College is a transitional period – in my view, a time when the student will pick up the obligation to support both needs and wants in an incremental way. Hopefully, by the time of graduation, the young adult will be fully able to assume 100% percent responsibility.</p>
<p>eyeamom has posted about the importance of learning to plan and to budget. Responsibility for some necessary expenses is one way to help gain that skill. It is one thing to think, “I have $200 and I can spend it on anything I want… what should I use it for?” - vs. “I have $200 and I have to buy books. How can I best allocate that money?” </p>
<p>In any case, I think that my position is simply pretty normal for parents like me for whom the term “discretionary income” was once a total fantasy, heavily reliant on a financial aid package that met “full need” only by virtue of fictions imposed by the financial aid office. (Such as the fiction that my house was spending money, or that my kids’ father was somehow going to be contributing to their education). It was a stretch as it was to have to pay for my end of the equation – I had to borrow myself to make it all work. Maybe it would be very different for parents who are better off financially – I certainly would’t have wanted my kids to suffer if I had money to burn. But the minute it was clear that I would have to borrow money, I think it was pretty much incumbent that my kids be expected shoulder as much responsibility for the shared endeavor of a college education, as they reasonably could be expected to take on at the time.</p>
<p>If either of my kids ever ran into financial trouble, they knew they could come to me to ask for help. (But they didn’t-- I really can’t ever remember either kid directly asking me for money in college, though they both knew how to graciously hint at items they needed, and I strongly encouraged them to keep their Amazon wish list up to date.) It is not as if either kid would ever starve.</p>