<p>Your kid has a paid summer internship in NYC (in between jr and sr years).<br>
The internship pays well, but Manhattan housing (as everyone knows) is expensive. </p>
<p>You can afford to subsidize to some extent so your kid can save some money from the internship versus spend the majority of it on housing / food. </p>
<p>If so, would you / did you / do you? And to what extent? </p>
<p>Let's stipulate kid is highly responsible, not at all spoiled / entitled, and not a big spender so this isn't about facilitating unlimited shopping trips to Bergdorf Goodman or the nightclub life here. </p>
<p>If your kid had a job but was still living at home you would feed him and give him a roof over his head - so helping with room and board makes sense to me.</p>
<p>For me, it would depend on how valuable I perceived this internship. If it’s truly a top internship in my ds’s major area, then, yeah, I’d help out. If I thought something just as valuable could be had in a cheaper locale or in our hometown so that he could live at home and save money on rent, then I’d push that option.</p>
<p>We’re already facing something similar with ds2, a freshman. There’s a program at his school that would enable him to get free housing with a 20-hour, on-campus job, leaving him plenty of time to get an internship in an area of interest. The free housing is the key; we’ve already told him he can’t take an internship that puts him in the hole financially. He really needs to be making money over the summers, not costing us money.</p>
<p>My D1 had an unpaid internship in DC and she paid for it herself. The only thing I did was send her a check for food money that I didn’t end up paying for because she was not living at home. So… beyond that, cover expenses for a paid internship in a more expensive housing market, etc.? No, I think not in our family. However, we have made the internship rules quite clear to our kids since well before they went to college – internship and not living at home? You are responsible for expenses related to that, whether it is paid or unpaid. Both have worked, saved, and are/were frugal spenders in college, so have/had a pretty good bankroll if they want to do this. They are responsible for spending money and books as well, so it isn’t like they don’t have anything else they have to pay for.</p>
<p>My d had a paid internship last year that was away from home and didnt provide housing. It was a very competitive internship and is a big “TA DA” on her resume. My husband adi decided that we would ask her to put all of the money from the internship into a CD for the future and pay her living expenses ourselves because we viewed this opportunity as an investment in her future. We were able to do this and felt completely comfortable with the choice because she worked hard to get the internship and she worked very hard at it and learned a lot from the experience. We wouldn’t have paid for her to goof off for a month.</p>
<p>Yes, I would subsidize for a valuable internship. I did subsidize an unpaid internship in a much less expensive area. I look at internships as part of the cost of an education.</p>
<p>We subsidized both a paid and an unpaid internship. First, we could afford it. Second, we live in an area with very few career opportunities. And three, my kid’s major was not a career-focused one, and having internships on the resume was crucial. She got a good job after graduation, and I’m sure those two internships helped. (And one summer was split between the internship and a paying job at home, so she did earn money.)</p>
<p>You can afford to subsidize to some extent so your kid can save some money from the internship versus spend the majority of it on housing / food. </p>
<p>That part jumped out at me. Would I subsidize a paid internship so they can save money? No. If they need help and it makes sense we can talk.</p>
<p>If the internship opens the doors for job offers soon after graduation, the ROI will be good. The cost of looking for a job after graduating is substantially higher than subsidizing an internship. </p>
<p>Fwiw, given the current state of internships, consider the paid part as a real boon. Companies have been abusing the current glut of applicants to the hilt. </p>
<p>Consider the subsidy a bargain compared to attending a summer academic program.</p>
<p>D2, who is working, has chosen to take a couple of paid internships since graduating while still working part time at other pay-the-rent jobs. Her take is that, these days, the internship is the foot-in-the-door. We subsidized costs when she was a student, but post-grad she’s on her own to work out the financial details … she has admitted to feeling some envy for peers whose families appear to be paying for them to live in the city and work for free/cheap.</p>
<p>We were in this position a few years ago and chose to subsidize (pay rent). The internship was in D’s career field and a big break for her. The way we looked at at was that it was part of her education and we were willing to pay for that.</p>
<p>Yes. Our kid never had a paid “internship” but she did stay on campus two summers where she worked full time in the admissions office. She had a 12 month lease anyway so we did pay her rent/utilities for the summers. </p>
<p>Getting valuable work experience is important. To me, this is a continuation of the student’s college work. If needed, I would absolutely subsidize.</p>
<p>If he could make ends meet on the salary to be paid, no. I’d let him have that grown up experience. </p>
<p>I would offer to pay for travel from there to home or there to school, however, and if it turned out he really couldn’t make ends meet, I’d offer help. I wouldn’t pay his living expenses in NYC so he could save the salary. </p>
<p>I had this experience many many years ago when I was a student. My parents didn’t offer to pay and so I covered all the costs. It was worthwhile for me to see how much it cost to live in a big city.</p>
<p>What are those summer earnings supposed to be used for? If you pay for summer living expenses and the kid then uses his/her earnings to cover living expenses when back at college in the fall that you would have had to cover if he/she didn’t have those earnings, then there really is no net gain. If you pay for summer living expenses and the kid spends his/her money to go skiing in Aspen over Winter Break that might be a whole different thing. </p>
<p>Of course if you want to help pay for housing because you can’t stand the thought of your kid living where he/she would have to live on his/her own income alone that is another story. There might not end up being any money left at all at the end of the summer in a high-rent area even with parental subsidies.</p>
<p>Since it is between junior and senior year, and the internship is well paid, I vote for letting said child try to pay for everything him/herself, as it is a good experience to assist in making a decision about what to do upon graduating from college.</p>
<p>You can always help out if it becomes necessary.</p>
<p>OP says they are considering ‘subsidizing to some extent’, which can mean a lot of things. Doesn’t necessarily mean covering every expense. Sounds like there will still be some accountability for the student to cover some of his/her expenses, whether that be during the summer, or back at school during the school year.</p>
<p>When D1 had her junior finance internship, she had to pay for her housing upfront. She stayed at one of New School’s dorms. We paid for it with the intention of her paying us back, but we didn’t get around asking for it. She paid for her food and other incidentals, and did have a nice nest egg at the end of summer. She used her savings and sign on bonus the following summer to get her first apartment after graduation. I think if D1 had expected it, we probably wouldn’t have been as generous.</p>
<p>I have trouble affording this position, but still, my feeling is that anything that contributes to long term stability (versus short term earnings at a restaurant, for instance) is something I would try to help out with. My kids want to pay for themselves so I have to convince them.</p>