<p>I would appreciate any advice from parents on how spending limits were established. I have a D,freshman;meal plan, no car, dorm living, not including text books, urban campus. I have heard amounts ranging from $100 - to $400.</p>
<p>There are some other threads on this topic. The amounts and the thinking behind them varied significantly.<br>
Debates over:
- what’s included in this budget versus what do the parents pay for…clothing, haircuts, sorority dues, dates, entertainment expenses?
- when is the amount distributed? (each semester lump sum, monthly, weekly)
- what happens when the limit is exceeded?
- is the spending monitored by the parents?</p>
<p>Also…consider whether DD is working, or using loans/scholarships to cover expenses ie:textbooks, flights home. DD used her credit card, and we put money into her checking account if it was an item we agreed to pay for, otherwise she was responsible for covering those charges/fees. I hope this helps.</p>
<p>My D’s spending money is expected to cover toiletries, entertainment, non-meal-plan food, miscellaneous school supplies, stuff like that. She gets $150/month.</p>
<p>As to how we established that amount, we took an educated guess at the beginning of the year that she’d need $200/month. At winter break, she told me it was too much, so we cut it back to $150. I know, weird…</p>
<p>I don’t think my parents ever gave me formal spending money per se, but they did put some university bucks on my student card when I asked (probably amounted to a total of $300 over the four years). They paid for my textbooks the first two years (I took a lot of credits, so my textbooks probably cost $700-1000 a semester), and I paid for the last two. We always drove here, not flew, and they paid for travel gas/motel. They paid for my sorority dues (I offered) and I pay my social bill (sorority t-shirts, etc). I typically paid for tolietries and any off-meal plan food, especially in my junior and senior years when I was working two jobs. I also paid tuition, fees, room, and board fall semester of my senior year (~$4k), and my parents paid graduate school interview expenses (~$6k). I paid for actual application expenses (~$3k).</p>
<p>Wow, $3K application expenses! That sounds like quite a bit of money for applications! Things have really changed since I was a student–can’t remember app expenses being anywhere near 4 figures!</p>
<p>The other thing to think about is how expensive the college environs are. A rural college town where the local restaurants are “cheap eats for college students” may be different from an upscale suburb, and different still from, say, New York City.</p>