I do think boys have it a little easier than girls. Usually less concern about clothes and no spending on makeup, accessories, even little gift things for friends and roommates. Boys tend to be lower maintenance in that way.
The school also can play into this. My S school is in a very small town. There is one nice restaurant and a pizza place, sandwich shop etc. Not much more. So no money spent on clubs, or shows or transportation etc. His dining facilities are open from 7 am till midnight and his swipe card works in several places.
I can see if you are going to school in NYC or Philly etc there are more opportunities to go to a museum, concert, play, even just to other restaurants and so forth. More opportunities to spend money.
I don’t think this is necessarily so. I see boys buying more video games, gadgets, not to mention more food - these can offset the makeup and clothing purchases. Are they lower maintenance? Or just high maintenance in different ways?
My H gives my D $100 every two weeks on his payday - so $200 per month. I deposit it in my account and move it to hers. Most of the time I am pinching off it if I need an extra buck or two. She never knows what she has in the bank and can go for days at a time with almost no money. As a AA female, she has to get her hair done so she goes to a stylist in the city. It is not a cheap hairstyle so I transfer money for that every few weeks. For the most part everything she does is on campus and except for a coffee or FroYo every once in awhile, she does not spend anything beyond books, etc. at the beginning of the semester.
We pay tuition, room, board, and books, Fun money is up to them, from a summer job. If they have to take an upaid internship during the summer, we will give them spending money during the year.
We don’t pay anything for an allowance. That is what summer jobs are for. We gave our DD’s their savings accounts (with all birthday/baptism money) when they started college. That was the seed money for their spending. After that, it is up to them to replenish with summer jobs. We pay tuition/room board/travel/books.
I am finally caught up on all the posts.
Like I said earlier, child #1 is on a full ride, meaning tuition + room and board+some expenses. We transfer an equivalent of $50 per week to his account monthly, this is suppose to cover books and supplies, laundry, any transport to and from the airport and other incidentals(meaning Starbucks ). We pay for any medical fees and for flights home. To me this was a no brainer, since we are saving a ton of money not to have to feed him here and not paying for gas. My kids do not have their own cars. Never did. They use ours, and if they use it a lot they have to fill up the tank every once in a while. Kid # 1 is making some money while in college, and with kid #2 soon entering the world of post secondary education, we will probably have to regroup and rethink. Kid #1 will be renting his own apartment this summer, no money from us for all of this . While I think that they absolutely need to learn the earning to spent ratio, I am thrilled not to have to pay any tuition, so maybe that is why I am more liberal with pocket change…summers so far in our case are paid for, but he is still trying to earn some…
I’m really enjoying this thread. My husband and I haven’t given much thought to what we will do when he heads off to school in a few months. I was thinking about $100/month, but I don’t think he’ll even need that much. We will pick up all school related expenses (books, sports fees, extra music lessons, etc.), and he’s not much of a spender. He got $600 for an internship last summer, and with the addition of a couple hundred dollars from birthday and Christmas presents, he still has over $500 left, despite the fact that he pays for the gas for the car he uses to go to school and other activities. We will strongly discourage him from getting a job. We are paying far too much for his education to have him take a minimum wage job that will take away from his study time. I guess we would feel differently if he were a big spender who needed to learn how to budget. We would expect him to use the pocket money for eating out, entertainment, and laundry.
Re: Campus jobs, its been my own personal experience that working 5-10 hours per week is perfectly doable while juggling a full-time academic load. In fact, I’d argue it leads to better performance as one is required to organize and budget time more wisely. The only exception I could see is when a student is a varsity athlete or doing an internship during the school year. YMMV
Both of my kids made lots of connections for future employment with on campus job. Not minimum wage job but one of my kids had minimum job for a week and it was life learning experience.
I would agree that certain jobs could be worthwhile, but I don’t see that as being very likely his freshman year - Wendy’s or McDonalds seem the most likely. Also, it’s been my experience that most first year on-campus jobs go to work study kids, and mine won’t qualify. It is also very likely that he will be on the swim team and involved in theater, so free time will be at a minimum. He can work summers and breaks if he wants to, but his needs (or should I say wants) are very minimal.
Summer jobs paid for incidentals. We paid for the “ask-a-dentals”…"Dad, I saw a really cool (insert tech gadget/or non essential but really cool nerd toy here). Maybe I could put that on my Christmas list? Sure enough, Dad would usually scour Amazon and the gadget would be on its merry way shortly thereafter. The stuff that made her life easier and kept her from worrying too much about running out of funds for printer ink, hair products, cleaning supplies, etc. Since she was on a pretty good athletic scholarship, and was an RA, we felt she was doing her part. It was fun to send surprises :-). That, and the fact that she didn’t ask all that often.
Stocking the fridge and hitting Costco for staples was a quarterly expense (more during her season when we’d go to games).
I don’t even know what she would have done with 600.00 a month. Probably develop really fine taste in wine? Or treat her friends to weekly sushi?
Groceries/food when off campus - is this included as expense/allowance money in this formula? This would cause allowance money to go way up, especially for guys. If in NY or LA, or another big urban area, they tend to have bigger expenses. Getting around or going out there isn’t cheap there, that’s for sure.
We come from the top 1%, but we feel like we’ve paid so much for private school K - college etc and we think that that is plenty. So had discussed an allowance of $50 - 100 per week, but never implemented it. So no allowance. Although we pay for all clothes, basic toiletries or supplies, laundry, books, computer, cell phone, and now sorority fees. She puts that sort of stuff on our joint credit card. DD pays for all coffee, snacks, food (outside of meal plan), dinners, bars, going out, movies, hair cut/color, makeup, travel/vacays if not coming home, etc. from her oncampus job and summer jobs.
I agree with what others have said about working on campus. Both of my kids worked on campus and they weren’t on work study. Their jobs on campus have lead to other off campus internships, exposure to other administrators on campus, and recommendation letters from their boss.
My son is in dorms but will probably move off campus for his last 2 years. I would consider food money separate.
At $300 a month he is getting more allowance than some. I looked over his bank account a while back and it looks like he spends a good chunk of his money on food even with a meal plan. He had a few grocery store runs. He’s kind of picky and he does complain a bit about the food. Dinner also doesn’t run as late as he sometimes wants to eat.
I am saving on grocery money at home with him gone, so that helps.
I absolutely agree that having a job (10-15 hours a week) helps with academics. Especially if your student was an athlete or really busy in high school with EC’s. My son was a swimmer and literally did not get home from school until 7pm all year. He then ate and studied. He will have soooooo much free time on his hands that working 10-15 hours a week will be good. I have asked him to start looking for a job starting in the middle of his first semester.
I definitely wouldnot consider food money in the pocket change category if the student has a meal plan. Again I’m so surprised that kids can spend several hundred $$ a month. I don’t mind footing the bill for books, food plan, most clothes and toiletries. But I’m not paying for concerts, restaurant meals, trips etc. Thats what his summer job money is for.
