<p>So it looks like MIT doesn’t have the traditional “meal plan”, but you put money on a electronic eating card, she swipes her card at the on campus eating sites and the cost of the meal is debited from the card? </p>
<p>If so, this is not quite as bad as eating out every day at the local restaurants.</p>
<p>Dartmouth has a similar set up, except that at the beginning of every quarter, we have to prepay a certain amount on the card depending on which “plan” we choose. The medium plan is $1330 a quarter which is about $4000 a year.</p>
<p>Looked up Harvard board cost: $4608. </p>
<p>I’d put a similar amount on her dining card (incrementally) and let her figure it out. </p>
<p>We also gave our kids $200 a month for fun, incidentals, including eating out at places that weren’t part of the campus meal program. Neither kid has complained that it was too low.</p>
<p>Whaaaaat? I can’t get out of the grocery store for less than $50 and it seems that I only went in for a loaf and bread, a 4 pack of TP and some bananas! Your S is amazing, Marite!</p>
<p>Wouldn’t it be funny if, after all the argument about how much is too much between this thread and the one in the Fall, OP’s D was cooking all along and using the extra money for a lavish social life? Refusal to cook like any normal adult and manipulating mom into thinking she’ll go hungry if she can’t eat out every meal of the day is precisely what my never-do-wrong angel of a roommate has been doing all year.</p>
<p>POIH,
IIRC, you were giving your dau between $500-$750/mo for meals, clothes and social life (including sorority activities). I believe you said your dau gets 50% off meals she eats in dining halls. How much did you end up giving her per month? ( I believe you said you didn’t want to reduce the budget you’d offered when she was just getting adjusted to school.) Has she been charging excessively on the charge card? How much has she been spending? How much do you want to allocate to her per month? You indicated that she put $250/mo into college dining dollars which, if I understand correctly, equals $500 worth of food (if she gets a 50% discount).</p>
<p>Have you asked her for an accounting of her spending? These will all be important issues. She is a bright girl-- she can provide these figures. Let her know you are reviewing costs and want to discuss budget/allowance with her so would appreciate her pullign these numbers together in advance so that you can have data to work from.</p>
<p>$20 a DAY for food? Sorry but this is excessive even in Boston. My kid lived off campus in Boston for two years and thus cooked. He spent less than $50 a WEEK on groceries. He packed his lunches and bought snacks too. We gave him gift cards to the GROCERY STORE…no money for food. And as others stated, we also replenished things when we visited. And I should add…my kid LOVES to cook. BUT he is also a terrific shopper…is willing to try what’s on sale.</p>
<p>Our household rule with both kids…we did NOT give them an allowance for discretionary spending. If they wanted to eat out…they paid for that.</p>
<p>POIH…I thought your daughter had a campus research job? Can’t she pay for her meals out when she wants to do so? If it were me…and I were you…I’d put the money on the MIT dining debit card and tell her any meals ANYWHERE else are on her dime. Sorry…but our kid ate in the dining hall in Boston and he didn’t die. Our DD did the same in a different metro area.</p>
<p>I posted on that other thread about this to you…eating out in Boston can be very pricey and eating out for brunch every weekend is excessive. </p>
<p>I know I’m sounding quite rough but I think your generosity with your daughter has been taken advantage of!! She needs to be more thrifty with her spending habits…unless, of course, you plan to do this for the rest of her life.</p>
<p>I would ask to see all the credit card statements. I’d encourage dinners out for less than $6-7; she can drink water rather than a soda. I’d try to help her budget and begin cutting back, Too many Starbucks a day? That can add up easily. I’d talk about the restaurants that are included with meal card (the 50% discount) and help her chose the best of these alternatives. Ultimately, she can realize that she is allotted a certain amount per month, and if that $ goes into her mouth, it doesn’t go on her back. (meaning clothes)</p>
<p>I’ve seen many HS students that won’t bring lunch from home, won’t eat cafeteria food, so eat out lunchtime and after school. If they go out with friends, that’s another $10 day. Easily run up 25-30 a day. Starbucks adds another 5-10.</p>
<p>I suspect half the kids at MIT receive some FA, so not everyone will be eating out daily. They may chose one “nice” meal a week, on weekend with friends.</p>
<p>D1 is living off campus this semester. I give her 400 per month for food, utilities and stuff she needs for the apartment and 200 for allowance. She doesn’t put any additional food charges on her school acct. We came up with that amt because it is equal to her school’s full meal plan. I also pay for half of her parking fee.</p>
<p>When she was looking for an apartment we agreed on a budget, which was equal to her school’s room rate. She was able to find a sublet in one of the nicest aparment in collegetown at our agreed amount.</p>
<p>we did the “Oldfort” plan with both kiddos. We agreed that the TOTAL amount spent when kids lived off campus could NOT exceed what it would have cost to have them live ON campus.</p>
<p>Just doing some math…we also gave our kids money for utilities (cable, heating oil, electricity) and rent. The “food” portion of what we sent them came to about $300 a month…roughly $10 a day. Neither of them ever complained…and my guess is they used precious little of this money to eat out.</p>
<p>I’m from a different school and don’t want to put a limit on her spending. I just want to teach her how to manage it properly.
I just make sure that her checking/saving doesn’t fall below a minimum. This semester I’ve seen more activity than the last semester which might be due to more social outings.
She still seems to be using a combination of MIT TechCash, CC, and cash to get food and entertainment.
I sense from the responses that $750/month is still a good amount.</p>
Yes, the real issue is to teach her how to properly use all the money she has access to. I want her to learn how to spend with in a budget without running out of money. In my view the key to sound financial planning is to have budget irrespective of how much money you have access to. As a student she should have a budget and live with in that even if she has no apparent reason to do so.</p>
<p>Oldfort, my son is on exactly the same “budget plan” as yours. We give him $400 a month for rent/utilities and $200 for food per month. He has work/study 10 hours a week and that gives him an additional $$ for gas (we pay insurance), car maintenance, supplies, books, etc. He spends about $50 a week at the grocery store. It’s a tight budget but when I asked my son how he was managing he said it was all good because all college students are “broke” all the time. My son is very good in the kitchen so I imagine he knows how to “shop” and cook to maximize his budget.</p>
<p>Prepare for a future bankruptcy or a lifetime of dependency on you. Your constant funding of your daughter is not teaching her good financial skills.</p>
<p>well , I just looked at my son’s on campus food purchases [ no meal plan at this point, he just swipes his card at various venues on campus], and it has averaged $15-20 day for his on campus retail food purchases [calculated for 20 days/month]. Now, he is a big staping boy who often eats all 3 meals on campus, so YMMV, especially with a more petite girl, but I think this is a reasonable amount for us anyway. He lives with 7 other kids in a house off campus- and that costs an additional $500/ month for rent plus probably $100 /month total for all expenses- groceries/ utilities/ gas for his car. He makes about $6500 in the summer at various internships, so he is contributing to the out of pocket costs.</p>
<p>We give S $250/month for food. He can spend it however he wants. If he runs out – oh well – guess he goes hungry for a few days. He’ll learn. Sorry to sound so tough but that is about what we would spend if he was on a meal plan. He’s in DC. If he wishes to do more or needs more money then he needs to utilize the money that he earned over the summer. It’s not like he really has no money for food. Just no more money from mom and dad. It seems to have worked for us but each to his own. I don’t even think he spends the $250 totally on food for the month. I know that he goes to the farmer’s market weekly to get good deals on produce etc.</p>
<p>One of the best things we did for our kids was teach them they had to manage their OWN money for discretionary spending. We provided room/board/tuition monies…but THEY worked for the rest. They both budget within THEIR means (not ours) and this works. People ask me frequently how much my kids spend and the answer is always the SAME…I DO NOT KNOW. They earn the money…they spend it. It’s theirs. </p>
<p>It is, however, a family decision whether to provide money to college kids for social and entertainment purposes.</p>
<p>Thanks for the concern but we also eat out 2/3 times a week. So if she has been living with us we would have been eating out at least 2 times a week and it would be even costlier than the brunches she go to over the weekend.
I think her sorority socials are costlier.
I’m still watching to make sure she balance out her activities in the later part of the semester. But certainly I can bring that up.</p>
<p>Well, then there’s your answer. Ask her to come up what SHE thinks the budget should be … and then work with her to figure out what she’s spending on that could be eliminated (Starbucks, water bottles vs reusable water, etc.) and come up with a mutually agreeable figure. Certainly a young lady smart enough to go to MIT can come up with what she thinks is reasonable and her assumptions, and then you can go from there in terms of what you’re willing to fund or not.</p>
Refusal to cook like any normal adult and manipulating mom into thinking she’ll go hungry if she can’t eat out every meal of the day is precisely what my never-do-wrong angel of a roommate has been doing all year.</p>