Agreed, in this case I would not say the parents’ policy is comparable to the college’s
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Absolutely. Especially now, during covid times, I didn’t want to my d to have poor health coverage out of state.
It’s a mastercard debit card…all of our accounts are at the same credit union. He gets his paychecks direct deposited to his savings account and then transfers money into his checking account as needed. He’s incredibly frugal/stingy lol, and hates to spend money if he doesn’t have to so doesn’t keep over a $100 in his checking account. That was the problem. He usually has $50-$60 in his checking account for fast food/fun money. If he’s making a bigger purchase he’ll transfer that exact amount over from his savings.
He now uses the AMEX for gas and car related maintenance and he and dad square up at the end of each billing cycle 
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Ours became authorized users at 15 so they could put gas in the car and they got TSA Pre Check for “free”. D18 puts her plane tickets home on our CC, her medical expenses and books.
Her emergency came when she was on a girl’s trip and their Airbnb was a bust. Had to get a hotel. No one else had a credit card. She actually used her own CC, not mine, but if her limit wasn’t high enough, they would have been in trouble.
Her credit score is almost as high as mine- she’s in the high 700s! I’m sure that is in part because she is an authorized user on my cards. Stinker! 
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Just to be clear, I was not trying to convince you to have him give you back your Amex 
. I just wanted to let you know there are ways to get around that debit issue when getting gas at Sam’s just in case you didn’t know. The first time it happened to my son, he called me all annoyed that his card wasn’t working when he knew he had money on it. I always use mine as credit so use the “cancel” method so had to walk him through it over the phone. And yes, your son sounds like mine - stingy with his money! But I also get nervous with them keeping too much money in checking anyway just in case their card number gets compromised. My daughter buys a lot of stuff online using her debit card so I’ve told her not to keep much money in checking and transfer as needed. She also has her own secured Visa now through our credit union to establish credit so she uses that for online shopping now too.
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@MommaLue At this point, I’m thinking UC Merced is a reach. 
@AlwaysMoving There are many, many smart students around these parts that just want a cheap employable degree and attend SJSU either FT or PT. It’s not MIT or Cal Tech, but I don’t think these applicants give a you know what.
@loveorangecats BTW, we have an orange cat. He drives me nuts.
My D has an EA acceptance to SCU with some merit, so we’ll be evaluating any CSU or UC acceptance “against” SCU. There are a couple publics which offer the exact major/program D desires, but of course, everything this year in CA seems like a reach.
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My kids have a monthly allowance, different amounts depending on the school since the spending needs are different. This keeps them in line and they track every penny. Anything above that, they’re on their own. It also has helped them learn how to budget and I then don’t have to deal with giving them money at random times for things.
Also, getting your kids their own credit card will help build credit. Do NOT take out loans with the idea that a loan will help them build credit. It does not.
Discover has a great student credit card, with extra bonus for good grades as well as matching bonus after the first year. Also Chase has a student card but I don’t know the terms of that one. I would try to get them credit cards before they leave for college as I’ve often seen many parents wait until the last minute.
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Oh I know you weren’t lol! I think we’re both saying the same thing?!? Sound like our kids are a lot alike!
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D18 has the Chase card. She gets cash back. We taught her to never charge more than what she can pay off each month- so treat it like a debit card.
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Really? My D19 and S19 pay $500 to $700 per semester on books, and that includes renting some online books; they aren’t all physical books. I’m shocked that some students don’t have book costs!
I actually thought of the “emergency” we had. S had fairly major car repairs that needed done. When he went to pick the vehicle up, his bank had a limit on how much he could use on a debit card in one day. So he had to use the credit card for the rest. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to get his car back for a couple days (charging the max until the bill was paid). Maybe they would have taken my card over the phone, most places will but some don’t want to do that. But this way he could just get the car paid for and get out of there (he had a class to get to). He called me on the drive back to campus and explained what happened. He asked me to just transfer money from his account to mine to cover it.
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Umass Lowell does really well with CS and Electrical/Computer Engineering placements due to proximity of the Engineering firms in the suburbs, as well as an excellent career services office.
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We found renting is NOT worth it except in very rare circumstances. I usually shop around to see what it would cost to sell back a book before we buy it and often times we can get back more for selling it back (usually a different vendor than we bought it) that it is cheaper to buy the book used, sell it back than the cost to rent it. Only once have we rented a book.
At Cornell now they’re going to pretty much all electronic books though and they just charge us right through our bursar accounts. They’re all like $30 only, which is great, but my daughter usually wants a pdf version, but usually there are places you can find those online too for free.
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Waiting on California schools too! Isn’t your kid also considering University of Utah?
The main reason I like my kids to have an actual card is for emergencies – hotel if stranded during travel, towing if a car breaks down, emergency room co-pay (heaven forbid). I mean, I know they could probably reach us to give someone the credit card number over the phone, but having a physical card is reassuring to me.
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What if you don’t want an electronic version? Can you opt out for some of the books and buy your own? My daughter, who has to do a ton of reading for her majors, hates using online books, especially right now. Her classes last semester and this semester are all synchronous remote. She said she needs a break from looking at a screen and would rather use physical books when she can. Fortunately, most of the books she needs are super cheap, especially if used.
My son, however, doesn’t care one way or the other, so he just gets whatever is cheapest.
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The hype of the huge numbers of applicants makes me feel like the reaches are even more so this year. And then there is the whole question about yield which makes this even harder to understand or predict. I would be delighted for my D if she got in to one reach! Managing expectations I suppose.
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Boy, I’m glad I asked the questions because now I’m going to have to call Kaiser to check. Kaiser has been great for us once we switched over to DH’s plans. But they’re not everywhere, so the conflicting part in me hopes S21 stays in CA.
In terms of debit cards, etc., S21 has an Alliant account that I set up for him because I wanted to teach up him about checks and digital check deposits, etc. That was a learning experience. I wonder if he even knows how to address an actual envelope. I kept the debit card and I think once he goes to college, I’ll give it to him. I’m a big credit card user. Rarely carry cash and pay off my credit card monthly. Credit card gives you so much more fraud protection than debit card and I didn’t want anything tied to the bank account. I co-authorized my the kids on Capitol One since they were 12-14 ish to help build credit. I’ll have to see how I can check their credit score since the are tied to us!
@NateandAllisMom I’m not sure about snootiness of UDub CS grads, but I have them on my team (I work remotely and my team is in Seattle) and for a long time, I worked with the Amazon folks. Tons of UDub people. There may be some sort of pride in being a Dawg, but in the work place, I don’t find that to be the case. Tons of banter from UofMichigan peeps on my team, though! They all hang out. I do think having lived in CA, I’ve seen that Seattle has a rep for being snooty. I guess I don’t notice it because when I’m there, it’s with my work team, clients, and friends from college/high school. There was always a “we’re better than you guys” attitude with Californians since traffic in CA was so bad (it’s friggin terrible on 405 in Seattle and also on I-5, so that was a stoopid reason back then), our environmental laws are better, etc. But now it’s mute because there’s so much cross-pollination with transnational companies there. Now it’s just rich people Seattle snootiness. LOL.
@sushiritto LOL. UCM but then it’s not the Paris of UC’s like UC Riverside, tho. TBH, totally regretting not pushing S21 to apply to both at this point.
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Both DH and I were also shocked to realize this morning that D18 hasn’t spent anything on books since her first semester in college. D18 happened to call this morning so we asked her about it. Apparently, she was always able to find friends who have digital copies of whatever textbooks she needed. Idk copy right issues though.
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I think it just depends on the college like I noted above. We don’t give S any spending money and D wit get any either. They are getting full price expensive college from us and transportation back and forth in the form of flight so that’s all they get!
Also, I think as long as you have your student on a parent credit card, they build credit. The student does not have to use the card.
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