<p>How much monthly allowance would you give your child (college student)?</p>
<p>A couple of notes to take into consideration:
*Located in Los Angeles (USC).
*School covers everything except food.
*Student lives in an apartment instead of a dorm, because it is cheaper.
*Allowance would include grocery, books, laundry, and miscellaneous expenses (fun, emergency, etc.)
*Student was jobless freshman year first semester and received good grades. Held a job second semester and sophomore year first semester, however grades took a hit.
*Allowance will also cover $100 monthly phone bill and a job is not an option.</p>
<p>Why can’t he/she work in the summer to get pocket money for the year?</p>
<p>Sorry not a fan of going jobless. It doesn’t teach responsibly, time management, and it isn’t good to not have experience when entering this tough job market.</p>
<p>I understand perfectly what you are trying to figure out. My son has an apartment. Need all that you laid out. Hat I did is set up a credit card that I have daily access. With his own debit card from his own account from his summer job. He uses the debit for the extras and food, phone, and essentials for the cc. I told him to be moderate and frugal when he can. We are going to spend the holidays calculating his expenses and then draw up a budget for the following semesters. He has made good choices and has even called me to confirm good prices on items. I have access to everything he buys and he has not abused this privledge. Good luck</p>
<p>You ask this question with the assumption that the job was the reason your daughter’s grades dropped. </p>
<p>Maybe she has poor time management skills, which needs to be addressed in order to succeed in upper-level courses and in the workforce after college. Or maybe she had some issues with friends or other personal worries that she may not have shared with you. Maybe she’s not understanding the new material as well as she did her first semester. Or maybe she’s settling in and has more friends, and thus more social events she’d rather attend than in the first semester.</p>
<p>I would suggest getting to the root of the problem and seeing whether fewer working hours will help give her the extra study time she needs, or if she just didn’t like working and replaced study time with social time to cope. </p>
<p>I didn’t take any money from my parents during college, worked full-time and graduated with honors, and am paying back student loans myself. It is good to teach kids to budget if you truly believe an “allowance” is the best option, but time management is just as important (and certainly more important to future employers).</p>
<p>As romanigypsyeyes said, it is not good to graduate college with little work experience - especially if the reason was time management. What relevant experiences will she draw from in interviews? Clubs and other social events? Structured class projects?</p>
<p>Seriously consider these things before you take the more costly solution to this issue.</p>
<p>$100 a month phone?? That is crazy… my kids own providing their own spending money and book money. And paying for anything beyond basic cell phone service. We do have a limit on our minutes, but it is high… they pay for texting… and no one in our family, including me, has a smart phone. If you are international, agree that you should switch to Skype for family calls, it is free.</p>
<p>Regarding the job and grades, there is no reason she can’t work in the summer for money. Even if she does something unpaid, there is time for an evening or weekend fast food job or something. I think every kid should work. It is as much a part of learning how the world works as anything else they will do in college. And regarding working during the school year, I can’t see how a job taking less than 10 hours a week could burden a kid into dropping classes. There are usually jobs like that around campus. I would not jump to the conclusion that the job was the cause of class difficulty. Almost all college students juggle a job along with classes.</p>
<p>I understand your opinions, however my child goes to school on the opposite side of the US. Her school is located in downtown LA, where there have recently been shootings on and off of campus, so she needs a cell phone and not having one is out of the question. A summer job will not solve the problem of the current school year and she does plan on having an internship this summer.</p>
<p>This allowance is for one semester and after that she will work things out on her own. However, I want her to focus on figuring out her time management schedule before adding more things to her plate. Also, she covered the phone bill herself while working. But because I want her to take a semester off from having a job I will be covering it. I’m honestly not looking for opinions on whether or not she should have an allowance, I just want to know what would be an appropriate amount.</p>
<p>For groceries we’d give out kids the cost of a full meal plan and they can figure out how to budget their food around that amount. My thoughts on the other stuff would not be helpful.</p>
<p>Excluding rent/utilities, my own personal budget (in St. Louis, so take that as you will) is $400 a month.</p>
<p>That includes food/groceries (typically <$200), car gas ($50), and fun/emergency/misc school expenses ($150).</p>
<p>Note, that last category includes everything from clothing, toiletries, textbooks, etc. So in January it may go up to $250 (I’m quite good at finding textbooks for dirt cheap), but other months will only be $50 (it just averages out over all 12 months of 2012 to be $150).</p>
<p>What you want to pay in the “fun/misc” category is obviously yours to decide. When my parents still gave me an “allowance” they put the money in the bank at the beginning of the semester (that $400 + rent/utilities = $1000/month) and trusted me not to be an idiot with it.</p>
<p>The only things not included in the figures above are cell phone & car/health insurance.</p>
<p>I’d say $500-750 for books per semester is normal at most colleges. Maybe $5 a week for laundry (A load of laundry at my school is $1 per wash/$1 per dry) And maybe $20 a week for ‘fun’ and other things?</p>
<p>There are plenty of free and cheap things to do as college students. You really don’t need much spending money.</p>
<p>I have a job (13.5 hours a week), so my parents don’t really send me money very often. If I ever need it though, they just mail me a check and I get it within a day. Perhaps you should ask your child to budget how much they think they need per month, give them that amount of money and if they need more, then deposit more money into their account.</p>
<p>Your daughter would know better about how much she spends than strangers would. Two students at the same college can have completely different spending habits. I know I personally do. I have a job, yet I spend way less money than my roommate who does not. She likes to shop. I almost never buy anything. I hate spending money. We also come from different circumstances, so that changes things. However, we live in the same place, go to the same school, and spend about the same amount on food.</p>
<p>I am looking for info on spending money for my second college student and stumbled on this post. I know these threads are more than a year old, but these people are asking how much a student needs. They are not asking your opinion on who provides that money, or whether their student should work or not. there are many v reasons for a family’s decision. </p>
<p>As far as what the student needs, why not look at the cost estimates given by the school?</p>
<p>Obviously, if the student chooses more expensive housing, food, etc., s/he may have to cut back somewhere else. Or if s/he chooses cheaper housing, food, etc., s/he may have more to spend elsewhere, or have some to save or reduce the amount of student loans or work earnings needed.</p>
<p>@Davinitall: Not everyone has the time to work throughout college. Plus, when your class schedule is all over the place, it’s hard to schedule your work hours. I don’t know of any jobs that have shifts that run less than 4 hours per day. </p>