S21 finished the Spring Semester with a 3.70, Fall was a 3.80…Deans Honor List both semesters! He’s going to be working at an Amazon Fulfillment Center starting next week. Crazy hours (6pm to 6am) but he’s getting paid $16/hr lol so he’ll be able to save up a lot of money this summer!
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With the economy as it is, it’s amazing what our kids can make. My daughter is making $18 an hour plus tips bartending at an amusement park (you can serve alcohol at 18 here). I’m sure the pay available is locality dependent, but I have a masters degree and I’ve never made more than $20 an hour, so she’s looking lucky from my perspective.
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I know right! My 17 year old rising senior is getting $13.50/hr working at the Legoland Discovery Center retail store at the mall!
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Someone in my house got an A in Calc 2, which I remember as being the hardest Calc.
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My daughter is getting $23 an hour this summer working full time. She’s going to save as much as possible to try and keep her part time hours during the school year to around 10 hours a week. I told her not to get used to it because I doubt she will make that much as a teacher, but then maybe something will be done about that by the time she starts teaching. Teachers definitely deserve more, that’s for sure.
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My kid just got home last night, for a five day stay before he heads back to school. He has a 10 week internship in a lab on campus. It’s hot and smoky here and the moths have arrived, just in time for his stay. Early in the pandemic, we had a huge moth migration come through. Come to find out, weeks later, he had left his window cracked. He would be covered it hundreds of moths by morning. He was a pretty unhappy kid to live with at that point, so this was hugely satisfying.
Anyway, lots of discussion about how he will feed himself this summer. He can pay for 3, 5, 7 etc days of dining hall a week, at $9-10 dollars a meal. Service is a good bit more limited than normal, but still doable, for the occasional meal he doesn’t need to cook. Might be closed on Sundays.
Otherwise, he’s trying not to spend much. He will be in a dorm with a good kitchen. We’ve talked about overnight oats, bagels, quesadillas, ramen, the usual subjects. Anyone have good ideas that don’t take forever to make? He eats pretty clean, so bonus points for anything with veg.
He heads back on Monday, and the grocery store is a bus ride from campus, so I may take him shopping here for some basics. He can check a duffel bag worth on his return trip.
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My daughter swears by her crock pot. She usually makes a big pot of something on Sunday and then morphs it during the week for lunches and dinners. She does a crock pot chicken with beans, rice, tomatoes, peppers and onion, that she’ll morph into quesadillas, salads, chicken salad sandwiches, or put over pasta. Gnocchi is a good base for meals as well.
I got her a 5 ingredient crock pot cookbook for xmas one year and she swears by it. https://www.amazon.com/Ingredients-Crock-Cookbook-Beginners-Mouthwatering/dp/B09PHJRMSC/ref=asc_df_B09PHJRMSC/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=564746906338&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16605534404841539156&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9021564&hvtargid=pla-1595443494695&psc=1
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S19 is living in a dorm while he interns in Boston. Has a fridge and then a communal kitchen but doesn’t see using it much because it’s for the whole dorm. No meal plan available. He’ll get almond milk, berries, yogurt and cereal to keep in his room for breakfast. Almond butter, bagels, string cheese, trail mix, apples, bananas, oranges, baby carrots, Clif bars, etc. for his room. He can make a lunch out that stuff if he doesn’t grab a lunch out. Dinner is the hardest for him but maybe your S can always just plan to eat dinner at the cafeteria. S19 will likely be spending a lot at Whole Foods buying prepared dinners! Keeping healthy food in the room and filling up on that stuff definitely helps to minimize how much he’ll have to spend for outside meals!
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Good thoughts on the crock pot. He may balk at having yet one more thing to haul around. Kitchen is a communal dorm kitchen, so not sure how busy it will be. Otherwise he has a microwave and fridge in his room.
The job comes with free lodging, but pays around $12 at a guess. I’m urging him to buy 5 meals a week, and eat heavy suppers in the caf. Always nice to have other people prep those complicated things. Downtown is a twenty minute walk, so I don’t think hell eat out often. There are snack bars on campus for the occasional breakfast sandwich.
Can he use the dining hall as needed or does he need to buy one of the plans? Also, is there a Target within walking distance? They have decent grab and go options that will be cheaper than a meal plan.
Nope, he’d have to sign up for a plan, I think, but I’ll ask. Maybe so they can anticipate need on an emptier campus? The snack bars are an option, but less healthy. Target is a 10 minute bus ride away, next to the grocery store.
I love the 5 ingredient cookbook, thanks for the recommendation! I don’t know if he can have a crock pot in his room? Surely people wouldn’t eat from this in the kitchen? Maybe depends on how good it smells. Can you tell I’ve had lunches stolen from office refrigerators?
He’s not a big granola bar, ramen, snack food kind of kid. And I don’t see him shelling out for string cheese, honestly. It’s going to be interesting.
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I think it will just be a weird eating summer for him. He’ll need calories and healthy food so he’ll have to figure out stuff to keep in his fridge that he’ll eat. I agree that he likely won’t be going to grocery store often. Too far away. Could he use Instacart for delivery? D21 did that a lot at Colgate. No grocery story within walking distance. I would definitely get on that meal plan. I don’t know about your S but no way that S19 would bother cooking in a crock pot in a dorm situation. When he lived in a house last summer with friends, they did stuff like that but it’s just not that easy from a dorm.
Definitely check, I’ve had kids at 5 colleges and paying yo get into the dining halls have always been options without plans (the smaller plans at one of them works out to be $16.50 per swipe). Dd21 is moving off campus and wants to buy the 75 swipe plan, works out to $12.50 a swipe, $13 if she pays OOP but then she can choose to eat anywhere, and most options are cheaper than the dining halls.
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Yep, the crock pot might be a stretch. Doesn’t help that he just had to pack up his room for storage, so probably doesn’t want to accumulate more stuff. He did bring his sheets home, and used his camping pillow his last night there. I doubt he will want to add a small appliance to the mix.
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Ok. I just reread your post. Does he have the funds to just eat at the dining hall for two/three meals a day? If so, I would just do that. Kids have to eat. S19 has already decided it’s not fun to spend a lot on food but he’s not going to go crazy trying to save money - it’s part of the cost of his summer plans. Your S is lucky that he’s on a campus with food service available unlike S19 who is in an expensive city without a realistic kitchen plan! So far this week, his boss has taken the interns out for lunch so he’s been eating a big lunch and smaller dinner Lol.
Makes sense that they’d have this option, given all the summer visitors on campus. He’s just being very economical and will probably not want to pay more than $10 a meal. It’s interesting to watch. There’s one restaurant, adjacent to campus, with really good foot, not super pricy. Has he been with friends? Nope.
I won’t tell him about his dad making tomato soup from ketchup packets in grad school. It’s just wrong. And I could supplement his food budget this summer, and can offer that up. And send lots of care packages of course
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It’s just 10-12 weeks. He’ll figure it out with a little help from your care packages. 
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Yep, I agree. I had originally recommended to him that he buy a 10 meal a week plan. But he didn’t want to spend the money. He’s gotten annoyingly independent this year. Even reimbursed us for laundry detergent, which I told him was totally unnecessary! I think he’s taking this whole adulting thing very seriously.
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Congratulations - what college?
Miami of Ohio
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