For what it is worth, many, but not all, colleges and universities include a “personal expenses” line item in their cost of attendance.
Most of them seem to be in the range of $2,000 +/- a few hundred dollars for the academic year, though there are a few that list these in the $1,000 range, and some schools do not have such a line item at all in their cost of attendance.
If we take the $2,000 estimates as typical, then, over a 9 month academic year, a typical amount of “personal expenses” would be $222 per month. Of course, each student’s individual “personal expenses” could be much higher or much lower than this estimate (indeed, a frugal student could find ways to minimize these costs to reduce the cash outlay, student loans, or work earnings needed to afford the school).
Whether a parent will give such an amount (or more or less) as an allowance to a student, or expect him/her to earn it from work (or scholarships earned later) on his/her own, is a discretionary choice for parents who can comfortably afford their contribution to the college costs. Of course, those who are stretched to barely be able to afford the mandatory costs of tuition, books, and minimal living expenses would not have such a choice and would default to giving a $0 allowance because they cannot afford any even if they wanted to.
If $222 per month is typical, then parents who do want to give an allowance to their college kids may want to keep that in mind when setting the amount they will give. (But also note what the specific college the kid attends lists for “personal expenses”, if it does list that, in its cost of attendance.)
I don’t give my daughter (a senior) an allowance but we have a shared credit card and I pay the things that she chooses to charge on that. She has her own credit card and a debit card, too, and I don’t give her money to pay those. When she’s at home, I pay her expenses. My husband and I will be paying off her student loans and we paid the amount of her COA that was not covered by financial aid. My husband and I also pay her car insurance and her health and dental insurance and other medical expenses. I’m quite frugal for myself; it gives me great joy to help both my daughters and just wish I could do so more. But I’m glad that they both have jobs and are hard workers.
Daughter’s spending habits are in line with the parents. So she has a credit card for expenses. If something big or unusual comes up she asks before spending.
Her school takes credit cards without an additional charge. Frequent flyer miles from the charges pay for travel home and my visits.
She had a fantastic internship as a rising Junior. She has purchased clothing and personal items from this income.
I’ve been thinking about this for D next fall. I am more concerned she won’t spend enough than will. I can’t get her to buy clothes. I worked 35-40 hrs/week to pay for my school and every penny went to tuition. It was pretty miserable in college and I missed out on a lot due to lack of time/money. H did same. We have worked so hard and been so frugal because I don’t want my kids living like that.
S1 would take $20-40 here and there. He worked ~12 hrs/work study and summers. He had some adjustment at a rich kid school. Still remember him calling home incredulous that his dormmates were giving more to the area homeless than he had for spending money. We do/did pay for cell phone, medical bills, and car insurance on very old, high mileage cars.
Ah yes, the cars. My daughters both have cars, inherited from us. Both are 1992 Buick LeSabres. Sometimes they call them the granny cars. I call them boats.
You work really hard to earn spending money and you find events you could go for free. I didn’t get any spending money from my parents when I went to school. My summer earnings all went to pay for my tuition. I worked many hours to have some spending money. My grades suffered because I worked so much. My father later told me that he could have given me some spending money, but didn’t want to spoil me, and looking back he wished he had given me some allowance.
If you can’t afford it, you can’t afford it, but it would make your kid feel better if they have the means to accept some invites which cost money. My parents never asked me how I was doing for money and I never felt I could ask them for it.
Initially my son had a camous job which covered his spending money. His grades weren’t great first semester so he quit the job. The job wasn’t the only or even primary reason but we felt it was best to focus on school a bit more. So I’ve been sending him about $300 each month which was about what he earned. He is looking for another part time job now. He prefers to wirj and had a 10-hour a week job for the last half of high school.
He does have a car, my old Honda. In our area there’s really no mass transit so it made things much easier in HS for him to have a car especially as far as him having a job. We pay his insurance but he buys his own gas (when he has a job) and pays for minor maintenance like oil changes
He is at an instate public whic doesn’t cost nearly as much as a lot of schools so we can swing the allowance for a while but I do expect him to have a job again soon.
My kids didn’t have cars in college either. But many of their friends did. Mine were in urban locations with great public transportation, and a car would have been a headache more than an asset.
The whole discussion about spending money is really a family choice. There is no right way or wrong way.
I will say…the students do need to learn how to budget and live within their means. In my opinion,mregardless of where the money is coming from…they need to live within that price point. It’s a good time to learn when to spend money on what.
A search in cc will pull up many helpful threads on this topic. As others have said, it depends on your family finances and arrangement with your kids. We gave our kids an allowance in HS so continued it in college. We gave them $250/mo. What they didnt spend they saved. Both also worked in HS so had $ of their own.
I have two frugal kids, one of whom is a coupon queen - and will call me on the way home from the store to brag about how she scored $17 worth of yogurt for $1 or some such. No fears about spoiling here. Spoiling is about an attitude and a mindset. One can have a lot of money, spend it on nice things, and not be spoiled at all.
Don’t do what I did. I must admit frugality is not in my gene, I gave kid #2 a credit card with $1000 limit and freshman year, kid #2 spent up to the limit. I got smarter and cut off the credit card, kid was able to get a credit card on her own in sophomore year, so I gave her $300 in cash per month, she also works on campus bringing $500 plus a month. So this kid has $800 spending money per month on her own. I don’t know how much she saves but I know she is a very picky eater and uses zip car 3 times a week(oh boy was I surprised when I found out, not mad).
It varies from kid to kid, I never gave kid #1 any spending money but she did have nearly $10k in savings when she left high school for college, so she had a reserve and did work on campus part time for spending money.
For my family, the larger college expenses (tuition for both kids, housing and food for my son) are paid from the college fund. I pick up the other smaller expenses (both kids books/supplies, allowance and D’s gas and money for lunch) from monthly income/savings. Both of my kids chose less expensive colleges by choice (son at state CSU, D starting at community college). The fund will make it through their college years. We receive no financial aid.
And about frugal kids… I have one frugal kid (my son) who has saved a large amount of money from birthdays, holidays, allowances and when he worked. He spends money but is very careful about what he spends it on. He has his own credit card with a small limit ($700) which he uses for food. I pay the bill. He also has a debit card that he uses for his non-college expenses and for emergencies (which haven’t come up yet) he has a credit card in his name under my account. His twin sister is not frugal and a bit impulsive. She has a Buxx card (which is a debit card) which I put her money into when she requests and is allowed to use a credit card in her name under my account only with my permission.
It does seem that you are reinforcing both kids’ spending habits, such that kid #1 will continue to be frugal, while kid #2 will continue to be spendy. This might not end well for kid #2 with respect to personal finances later in life.
No, it’s not a problem, just not sure how much to start with since we didn’t have a set amount of S1.
Where I live, in a very rural area, the kid having a car is much about convenience for the parent. No public transportation and miles between everything.
We are paying for my sons college except I had him take out the $5,500 loans for some expenses. I will gim him $100 a month in his checking account and will put $50.00 a month I his UNC card for laundry and extras on campus. Hoping second semister he will get a little job
We are paying for D (College 16) tuition, room and board (and any items that are direct billed). We also pay for transportation home. She is responsible for books, laundry, spending money, etc. She also paid for her own iphone after she graduated from HS (I had paid her regular cell phone bill but since I didn’t have a smartphone at the time, she was responsible for any cost above what the non-smart phone would have been). She works about 5-8 hours a week at on campus jobs. Other than books, it seems her incidental costs are fairly minimal - perhaps $25/week.
Our philosophy has been that while we don’t want her to have a bunch of student debt, we would like her to have some “skin in the game”. It’s also great experience managing her own money (which she also did when she was on her gap year and making pretty good money). She prefers having her own money so she doesn’t have to ask permission all the time to buy things. For example, if she wants to go on a spring break trip, it’s on her to figure out if she wants to spend the money. (This year she was considering it, but decided that she didn’t want to spend $750). We are trying to figure out next year what we are going to do about sorority dues which seem to be fairly steep. I originally thought I would have her pay them completely since it’s discretionary but she will have a reduced cost meal plan next year and she is also serving in a mentor type role to first year student so she is getting a reduced room cost. So my H and I have to figure out but we may split the cost with her…not sure yet.
She also knows that if she wants to live away from home during the summer that our default position is that she is responsible for her room and board. (We might move on that depending on the opportunity/reason for living away from home.)
My parents were solidly middle class (or a tad above) and paid for my OOS school vs much cheaper in-state options because nobody IS had my major. They also paid for books and travel home. Everything else was up to me to fund.
DW and I are at least upper middle class and have the exact same policies. I would never give my kid an allowance even though we could easily afford it. DD1 is studying abroad this semester and I have made her pay her own travel expenses while overseas since her program cost me about 10k more than regular tuition. In fact, I am making her pay 3k toward the extra tuition bill.
I don’t care if I was Warren Buffet, I would not give my kids a college allowance. Actually, Buffet paid for his kids college and isn’t leaving them a penny of his billions, which I think is a little too extreme.