I'm posting it a second time as need to talk to DD over the break about Expenses!!

Parents Forum
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<p>It was my parents’ money. If they wanted to take their little precious darling princess (moi) shopping and spend $1,000 to outfit me, that was their prerogative, since they had earned that money. That didn’t mean that they were obligated to give me $1,000 to go shopping on my own when I was at school. Don’t you see the difference? </p>

<p>We are taking our kids to Europe next year. We are flying business class. Does that mean I am therefore obligated to give my kids enough money so that they can fly business class wherever they want?</p>

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<p>She has a realistic budget based on her available resources. At the moment, her available resources are “all my parents’ money.” </p>

<p>I think what you aren’t getting is that most people won’t limit themselves until there’s a reason to. With a limitless bank account, there is no reason to even attempt frugality. Furthermore, there’s no reward for her if she is frugal–she still has the same potential amount of money available to her either way (to infinity and beyond.)</p>

<p>When you actually do have a limited budget and you manage to have some $$ left at the end of the month, it’s a satisfying feeling. You can go buy something special or sock it away in a savings account–either way, you feel proud that you managed things well enough to have extra leftover.</p>

<p>With an unlimited amount of money, you could certainly buy the same thing, but the special satisfaction is gone.</p>

<p>With cooking, it’s a skill everyone should have (not just girls). Your daughter doesn’t need to love it, just know how to do it.</p>

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<p>POIH, neither of my kids were on any college meal plans after their first year of college. They both lived in housing with cooking facilities, at least from sophomore year on. </p>

<p>I did not give my kids any money for an allowance. </p>

<p>Like your daughter, they started out in college with a little money in savings – and from then on they were expected to work for their spending money, including (after the first year) paying for their own meals. </p>

<p>I’m not posting to tell you what you ought to do. I’m posting because I am pretty sure that that with the cost of buying their own food and paying for all other incidentals, neither kid ever spent anything like $750 a month. I figure $350/ month is more like it, with another $300 or so for the cost of text books each semester. </p>

<p>My daughter lives and attends school in NYC, which is about as expensive as it gets. And she has rather extravagant spending habits in relation to her financial circumstances – I mean, she will buy concert tickets, etc. But she had to learn to relate working to paying, to recognize that if she got paid $10/hour and the concert tickets cost $120, then she had to work 12 hours to attend the concert. (That, of course, motivated her to find work that pays a better hourly rate than work-study). </p>

<p>I think that if a parent gives a college age kid an allowance, then the parent should send a specific dollar amount at a specific interval, based on what the parent is comfortable with. When I was in college my parents did send me a monthly check – it was a very modest amount, and as I lived off campus I had to pay my own rent as well as food and incidentals. If I felt I needed more, than it would have been my responsibility to bring up the subject and request a raise from my parents.</p>

<p>If you give your kid a set $ amount, then it becomes the kid’s responsibility to figure out how to live within their means. Obviously if you are overly generous, you will set up a situation where the kid will get the message that there is no need to be frugal; and if you are stingy with your amount, you may set up a situation where the child ends up taking measures that you aren’t happy about, such as putting in too many hours at a job when you would rather your child be studying, or skimping on meals which could be a problem for a child with health problems raising dietary concerns. </p>

<p>But if you started from the point of an amount that YOU are comfortable with – then you wouldn’t feel this vague set of dissatisfaction under it all. If your kid felt she needed more, she would have the onus of making her case – and you could ask her to write out her budget to give you a sense of where it was all going.</p>

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<p>Why do I’ve to set limit in order to make her understand? What will happen if I set a limit of $500/$750 and once she gets a job and take home $2000/month. Will that mean she should not start maxing out on that $2000.
She need to understand that she will have to find a balance on her own so that she won’t misuse money when she will have more than what she should right fully use.</p>

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<p>Since I already told that the number I have is $750. If everyone tells me $2000 is the right one or $500 then I’ll look into her account with that amount in mind.</p>

<p>Still my intention is for DD to learn this skill on her own and not by putting artificial spending limit by me.</p>

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<p>What we are saying is that without a set limit she won’t learn. Who cares what she makes when she gets a full-time job, that should be something she looks forward to, more money, more potential to do things with it but then she will also have rent, utilities, insurance, etc so it would do her a huge disservice now to let her spend a large amount on just food and entertainment when she may find at $2000 take home pay she doesn’t have that flexibility.</p>

<p>She will learn more now by you setting a limit than you just wondering every semester if she should have what she has or if she needs more. You are fulfilling her every whim - a great spot for her to be in but in my opinion not one that will help her later in life. But hey, maybe she’ll never know hardship or feel pride in surviving on less, maybe she’ll never need to know that and then all your questions, all your pondering, won’t matter because she’ll continue being pampered by you and then you’ll fill in any shortfalls when she heads out in the real world because while you say you are responsible for her happiness now, I don’t see that you would ever allow her to be unhappy.</p>

<p>And for the record, $2000 is NOT the amount I’d recommend. I think $500 is generous.</p>

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<p>We don’t see a difference between the two if we are the one who are paying.
Either we won’t let her buy the dress else she should be able to buy if she has gone on her own too.</p>

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<p>You’re missing the point. Your daughter needs to deal with her budget NOW…and also know how to deal with it as it changes. If you set a limit now of whatever amount…she should learn to deal with THAT limit…just like she would have to deal with a salary limit from an employer. </p>

<p>When she is out on her own…and has a “raise” in her salary…then she can adjust her budget to meet that amount…WHEN that time comes.</p>

<p>You are not setting a budget for your daughter for the rest of her LIFE…you are setting it for the remainder of this school year.</p>

<p>I just don’t understand why you feel that you MUST give her every nickel she “thinks” she needs to spend without setting any limits. I’m sorry…it makes no sense to me whatsoever.</p>

<p>But whatever…it’s your decision.</p>

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<p>What do you mean by “being responsible?” Is it responsible for a college student to shop exclusively at Neiman Marcus? Or would it be more responsible to shop at some less expensive store? (psst… The Garment Factory is close to MIT) Why should it matter where DD goes to concert, you ask? It matters if the concert costs $100 when there are concerts some free, some costing no more than $10 at MIT and Harvard. They range from full-scale operas to Broadway musicals to a capella, to wonderful choral music, to music from all over the world.
Now, you are free to give as much spending money to your D as you wish, to tell her she can eat out wherever and whenever she wishes and you will foot the bill. That is your prerogative. But you asked our advice and we are giving it to you. If you don’t like it, don’t take it.</p>

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<p>That is what many people don’t get and so a lots of sports super star makes Millions of dollars and found themselves broke by 50.</p>

<p>Again what she need to understand that it doesn’t matter how much she is able to earn what matter how she end up spending that money.
So how does it matter how much she has access to in her checking/saving, she still need to figure how much is the proper amount to spend.</p>

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<p>POIH,tell your daughter this sage advice.</p>

<p>The best way to save money is NOT to spend it.</p>

<p>In other words…if you want more money for some things vs. others…you need to cut back or not spend on non-essentials…or save up for those non-essentials.</p>

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<p>POIH, What is “artificial” about setting a limit to how much you will provide, so she can learn how much she actually needs [ as opposed to WANTS] for basic expenses ? you need to set a limit on how much YOU will provide for basic expenses such as food, gas, utilities, phone bills, etc. , so that she actually has to LEARN how to make it last for the month. That’s what budgeting is all about! [If there is a REAL emergency, such as her laptop is stolen or her clothes are lost in a fire, and she needs extra money, of course you will provide it. But should that be the exception, not the rule] And WHEN she gets a job and starts to makes 2000/ month, then again, it is up to her to figure out how to stay within her budget and make it last to the next paycheck. If you start now, then she will have had real practice in learning how manage her expenses, instead of a false sense that “daddy will always pitch in if I ask him to”.</p>

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<p>I’ve gone to concerts during my undergraduate years with a fixed allowance from my parent. So I don’t think it is relevant whether she has a fixed amount or not, she could have gone to the concert.
I just would like to see how she make this up during rest of the semester or is it going to be a regular feature.</p>

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<p>How is what you are currently doing working for you?</p>

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<p>This is getting ridiculous. More than enough people have tried to explain to you the need for setting limits. The fact that you still don’t understand is incomprehensible to me.</p>

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<p>It’s funny that you say that, because that’s what I was thinking of. (Ok, the eighties were very very good. LOL.) My parents would take me to Neiman’s and buy me clothing and shoes. It wasn’t irresponsible of me since it wasn’t my money. It was their prerogative to spend how they liked. It would have been irresponsible if I <em>expected</em> them to give me money so that I could go shop at N-M on my own, or if I ran up bills at N-M on my own then expected them to pay them.</p>

<p>It’s not irresponsible if you decide to take your daughter out to dinner every night at the finest restaurants when she is home with you and wife in CA. It would be irresponsible if she went and charged dinner at the finest restaurants in Boston every night and sent you the bill (without asking permission first to spend that kind of money). You don’t have to justify your spending to her, but she does have to justify it to you to some extent.</p>

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<p>“So I don’t think it is relevant whether she has a fixed amount or not, she could have gone to the concert.” ONLY IF the fixed amount is low, so that she has to CHOOSE whether to have money to buy food at the end of the month OR go to a concert, will she learn how to make decisions about when and where to spend money. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourself if you think giving her an endless “allowance” will teach her how to budget what she spends .</p>

<p>I have a sneaky suspicion that POIH has blocked posts from some / many parents, so he is not actually seeing what everyone has tried to get across to him. We are all just whistling in the wind. For that reason, I’m signing off.</p>

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<p>What do you mean, what will happen? She’ll have more money. It will be hers to do with it what she wants, of course.</p>

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<p>POIH - I think I understand what you’re saying. My son moved off campus this year, and my H didn’t want to set a strict budget because he didn’t want him to have to scrimp on things like maintaining the car and eating a nutritious diet. But my son is more frugal (like me) so he sees this as a personal challenge. He wanted to learn to live on limited means, because he knows he may have years ahead of him where he won’t have loads of money. So yes, it is possible that a kid can learn to be self-regulating. </p>

<p>But it doesn’t just happen. I think it takes 2 things: a motivated kid who sees a purpose in learning to live on a budget, and someone to help him achieve this. </p>

<p>Here’s what I did to help with the second part: last summer, we spent a fair amount of time talking about food, and shopping, and cooking together. Many kids have no idea what food costs, and this was a real eye-opener for him, both how cheap some things are and how expensive other foods are. I wrote a sort of cookbook/advice manual to remind him of what he’d been “studying” - it contained advice along the lines of “here are all your favorite recipes that I make using pork shoulder. When pork shoulder goes on sale for $1 a pound, buy several and freeze them.” We agreed that he ought to be able to live on about $100 per week for food and gas. He actually lives on less, at the moment. He has a Costco card (for which many of his friends are extremely grateful), and does most of his food shopping there, along with his 3 roommates. He has learned that while the prepared foods are really tempting, he doesn’t want to live on those alone. He actually cooks real meals ! and has friends over for dinner! He enjoys this, he eats really well, and he still eats out at Chipotle when he’s too busy to cook (probably the single greatest value in healthy fast food). </p>

<p>So, your D doesn’t live in an apartment so she is unlikely to dedicate herself to learning to cook. But it would be a great idea for her to learn to be a bit more self-sufficient so that she won’t face the shock when she lives on her own for the first time and realizes she can’t eat meals out every day. The only way this will happen is if you talk to her about it and encourage her. Maybe reverse your position and actually enforce a budget limit, or at least set a target budget that you’re serious about. Good luck!</p>

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<p>PizzaGirl:

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<p>What is the reason for flying in the business class? Does the reason change when your kids fly alone.</p>

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<p>What if the limit set by you are too low or too high? Only DD can understand what the actual limits are and if she does she should follow.</p>