Well…if the has a paid internship this summer, she should have enough spending money for the fall, with an allowance added from you if you choose.
And I totally agree with @oldfort on this…
Whether it’s a parent allowance or money the students earn, they need to know how to manage their budget.
I didn’t approach the topic of a son paying for his dates all the time. It puts a strain of a young man , especially in a long term relationship.
“I didn’t approach the topic of a son paying for his dates all the time. It puts a strain of a young man , especially in a long term relationship.”
In a long term relationship, everything should be split 50/50, says this mom of a son and daughter. 
@itsgettingreal17 Working internships over the summer in many cases is influenced by major. Paid positions seem to be table-stakes for our S and his group of friends. That can include paid research positions or paid industry internships. All of them require that the position is the field that they are interested in or an adjacent field that interests them. Seems like their basic position is that if you can’t land a paid internship that expands your knowledge and network in your area of expertise you’re better off just experimenting on your own during the summer.
My D will be putting most of her internship earnings into retirement or investment accounts this summer. It’s not for spending during the school year. Great if you want your student to work during the school year or otherwise fund their own school term spending. Every family needs to do what feels right for them. We’re doing what works for us. D already knows how to budget and worked all through high school.
Brava. More students should have both retirement and investment accounts set up. S has had this since HS and his accounts are growing nicely (especially investments). The amount of internship money these kids get (CS major) in SV is impressive. So far all his investments are in good shape except for gpro that he bought when they ipo’d. So, he’s looking at taking a loss and using it to offset tax on earning from this summers internship. Lots of learning.
How many college students go on “dates” that cost money? I guess like a lot of things it varies by campus culture. If it’s the sort of school where pretty much all the socializing happens on campus, I’d imagine most “dates” are going to involve going to free or low-cost events. When I was in college I don’t think I ever went on a “date” in the sense of going out to dinner, a movie, etc., other than with boyfriends.
And god I hope that any date expenses don’t fall just to boys. It’s 2019, for goodness sake.
In HS, I gave them money each month which they had to budget for movies/eating out with friends.
What I did in college was seed their bank account with the money they had gotten from birthdays/etc. I said after that, you need to earn your spending money from summer jobs. I paid room/board/travel/health/books. So they pay for any extras themselves.
I have a friend who gives his son $40 a week…and then his son uses it to buy sodas and chick fil A.
And when he over withdrew, he would put money in the account so he wouldn’t get fees.
I counseled him that you are not teaching him anything about budgeting/prioritizing.
So I say for freshman year, make sure they have some money to spend, but then after that let them earn their own money over the summer.
My kid has worked summers and breaks since the end of middle school. Her personal spending money comes from her earnings. She pays for her cellphone and most of her clothes. When she was a HS freshman, she did a really good job of budgeting and had some money left at the end of the school year. Sophomore year didn’t go as smoothly; she was eating out a lot with friends (she attended boarding school) and ran out of money in March instead of May. It was a tough decision, but I decided to let her go without… no trips to the city with friends, meals out, special events, etc. It was just a couple of months, and she survived! I knew that if I bailed her out, the lesson learned would be “If I run out of funds, my mom will bail me out”. Not this mom! LOL
She’s in London now for 7 weeks working on her junior project. She went over there with a fixed amount of money, and is being a savvy spender; cooking most nights and eating lunch in the subsidized canteen at her workplace. Entertainment is exploring the city on foot. She’s budgeting carefully so that she can travel on weekends and make the most of the opportunity to see the UK and Europe.