<p>When I went off to college, my mom (my parents were divorced) was supposed to give me some kind of monthly allowance, but she didn’t for whatever reason. I had my own savings and that was my spending money. If I wanted to eat out or buy something or go on spring break that was on me. I replenished it from summer jobs.</p>
<p>Books, tuition, room and board and transportation home was paid for by my Dad.</p>
<p>If it is just spending money, then I would not replenish it. College is a time to learn to live quasi-independently. He has learned a lesson. If he has spent his book or room/board money then I would replenish only that amount and have him sign a promissory note to pay you back in the future or that could be your Xmas/Holiday gift to him.</p>
<p>Anothercrazymom - Good idea, but few of us have that up front money to give as a lump sum. Both my kids are having trouble budgeting this past semester and spending funds have rapidly dwindled. I am planning on suggesting that they use cash to help. I will suggest that they decide how much money per week to spend, and draw that amount from the ATM and they only spend cash. I think this will help with the “not sure where it goes” plastic spending.</p>
<p>GTalum, my inlaws started an account for him when he was born to save toward college. We added to it here and there, seperate from the college savings plan. It totalled about $12,000 when he graduated so that is how we turned the funds over to him. We are fortunate that we can pay tuition from current income and we have money in the college savings account. S is an only child too.</p>
<p>I agree with momreads, we need to teach about budgeting.
We do automatic transfers of the funds we give our kids.
For a time, one of mine needed small amounts every 2 weeks before getting the monthly distribution.
An interesting aside, when this same child was a college senior he lived with a friend in a townhome owned by his parents. The mother wanted me to pay the rent directly to her. I had to politely decline, telling her with graduation looming closely, my son needed to get in the habit of regular bill paying.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Dropping a class probably does not have financial implications. Usually, students can take anywhere from 12 to 18 credits in a semester without any difference in their tuition. And your son may not need to make up the class, ever, if he has AP credits. </p></li>
<li><p>Although students on a meal plan supposedly don’t need much extra money, there are instances where their class schedules prevent them from eating some of the meal plan meals (for example, a student with classes at 11, 12, and 1 may find it impossible to eat the meal plan lunch). In such instances, students may find it necessary to pay cash at a snack bar (or buy some food at a convenience store and carry it with him) to make up for the missed meal. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Your son may want to review his schedule for the upcoming semester to see whether there are any days when he won’t be able to eat his prepaid meals. If there are, he may want to investigate whether a schedule change that would allow him to get to the dining hall is possible. If it isn’t, he may need some cash to avoid going hungry. If he were my kid, I would lend him that cash, with the provision that he would have to pay me back from his income from a summer job.</p>
<p>GTalum, That is exactly what S2 is doing now. He had a few incidents of being overdrawn because of using his debit card and the charge not appearing immediately on his card. Then he would go out the next day and spend $5 he didn’t really have. DH advised him to just start withdrawing an agreed up amt. of cash for the week for his expenses (lives off campus) and when it’s gone, it’s gone. It seems to be the best system for him right now. He is pretty responsible making sure the rent, utilities and cable/internet bills are paid for his house of four roommates each month. Just needed to get a handle on the debit card swiping.</p>
<p>I rely heavily on my sister who is an excellent therapist. One thing that she’s always drilled into our heads is that since each kid is different (and has different weaknesses), you have to do what works for each kid.</p>
<p>One of my kids is VERY frugal…He could be given a bunch of money the first day of school and have most of it in his account at the end of spring semester</p>
<p>One of my kids had struggled with budgeting. He’s never been overdrawn, but he does overspend and it seems to always “surprise” him (ha ha).</p>
<p>He does have a few friends with a lot of money to blow. Two of his friends have big NMF scholarships that pay for nearly everything, and also have PACT money (pre-paid) and money from part-time jobs. These kids have about $12k per year just to blow on themselves! With friends like this, it’s hard to be the one to say, “No, I can’t go to the (movies, restaurant, bowling, whatever) with you.” </p>
<p>That’s why in my earlier post I wrote that as long as this kid thinks everyone spends like this, it’s going to be hard to get him to budget his money if he’s given a lump sum all at once. </p>
<p>Luckily, my son gets paid every 2 weeks, so that kind of forces him not to to go “too crazy.” He’s had to use a different method than my frugal son. He’s had to withdraw several days worth of money from the ATM, use that, see his ATM balance, and then withdraw again several days later. At least this way, he sees his balance going down each time he withdraws money. If his paycheck from his part time job is - say - $180 and it has to last 2 weeks, he knows that he should only withdraw about $40 every 4 or 5 days so that he’s not down to zero and has some emergency money. However, if he just used his ATM card, he’d blow thru $100+ over one weekend and probably $150 for the whole week. </p>
<p>I know that if he had a big chunk of money at one time, he’d go thru it in no time …and it would be a “memory-less” system of forgetting what he spent the previous day. </p>
<p>One of the problems with debit cards with spenders is that they have little to no idea how much is in their acct at any time. It’s like a credit card in their minds.</p>
<p>Some people are just naturally good with money, some are just average (me), and some are just bad. My H is not “bad,” but he is VERY guilty of not remembering from one day to the next what he’s spent. He recently looked on line and saw a $500 debit from Sams Club and immediately started questioning me about it. I hadn’t gone to Sams lately, so I knew it wasn’t me. he kept pestering me about the debit…until HE finally remembered that it was his Rx that he picked up (he has some expensive Rxs). I would have NO problem remembering a $500 expenditure from a few days earlier, but to my H, it completely slipped his mind.</p>
<p>I have to wonder how common this really is. Multiple people have mentioned it on this thread, but I’ve never seen it when I was looking for schools. We paid by the credit hour and it got to the point that they had a fee for just about everything added on. My last semester (fall2010) I was paying just over $400 per credit hour at a small regional state school. I wish 18 credit hours would have cost the same as 12!</p>
<p>Agreed. I am wondering the same thing. We pay per credit hour. If S drops a class, it would have already been paid for & just money gone.</p>
<p>As far as not needing it anyway…then why take it in the first place?! S declared his major when he applied & registered, so his school provided a 4 year plan of what to take. Not much ‘fluff’ around the required stuff.</p>
In my experience, most private schools are paid per semester. Most commuter schools (directional Us) tend to use per credit hour costs. Most flagship Us are per semester.</p>
<p>I think this varies widely, largely by the “type” of school. For example, schools where most if not everyone (or 90+% of undergraduate students) are full-time, and are private, typically have flat tuition rates. I’d lump Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Duke, MIT, Vanderbilt, WUSTL, Emory, Amherst, Williams, Pomona, Swarthmore, Wake Forest, Bucknell, Lafayette, Muhlenberg, Reed…et. al… into this group.</p>
<p>For example, Harvard has flat rate tuition - a little more than $33,000 a year. Doesn’t matter if you take three classes, four classes, five classes, or six classes (good luck getting approval for the first or the last!) a semester, you are charged $33k a year. I suppose if someone was on medical leave, or had a particular extenuating circumstance where they could only physically take 1 class a semester, they would figure out some “per class” tuition fee.</p>
<p>Similarly, Pomona and Muhlenberg both have per semester flat rate tuition, but have special “per-course” tuition fees available only to students taking 2 1/2 courses or fewer.</p>
<p>Many schools no longer have “credit hours.” For example, Stanford is on the “unit” system. Courses range in how many “units” they carry - and it’s not tied directly to the length of course meetings or their frequency. To graduate, one needs 180 “units.”</p>
<p>A regular, semester-long class is one credit at Duke. Doesn’t matter if the class is Bio 101, with 3 lecture sessions, a recitation, and a long lab each week – or if the classes is Advanced Sociology Seminar, with one 3-hour class each week. One class = one credit. </p>
<p>IMHO, public colleges and universities the ones who likely still do credit-hour tuition, because of state/govt. mandates and the (higher?) likelihood of transfer students and part-time or non-traditional students. I know some states have statewide mandated credit-hour systems to ease the transition from community colleges to 4-year schools as part of degree completion efforts.</p>
<p>I went undergrad at a place without “credit hours” and I remember being so confused when people would talk about taking 15 credit hours or 18 credit hours or what have you. To me, you either took 4 courses or 5, and that was all that was up for discussion.</p>
<p>I’m glad my undergrad (flagship state u) charged a flat rate from 12 credits hours a semester up. The technical limit was 21, but you could take more for no extra charge with an advisor’s signature. Winter intersession classes also counted toward spring credit hour counts. I think the most I took in one semester was 27 (three were intersession) and the least was 16 (again, three were intersession). I knew someone who took, I think, 30 or 32 one semester–might have even been 35. I appreciated that perk greatly, as it allowed for me to graduate with two majors and a minor in four years, and I think it took some pressure off of a decision to switch majors as well.</p>
<p>DD’s college was paid for by the term BUT she was allowed to take an overage of up to 21 credits in a quarter. The upper limit for most students was 18 BUT her additional three credits each term were for orchestra and instrument lessons. Since they didn’t want to discourage students from these ensembles, they did not make them pay if the over 18 credits was for them</p>
<p>At her school 12-18 credits was full time with the same cost for the tuition for the term. Any credits over 18 (for most students) had an additional per credit cost. If a student was enrolled for less than 12 credits, they were part time and paid by the credit.</p>
<p>My D can take up to 17 credits on the flat-fee semester plan. Anything over that is per credit hour. We have told D that she has to pay for any credit over 17. In her major, that is not difficult to do (lots of 1 and 2 credit lab classes).</p>
<p>My son’s school handbook has the rules spelled out when a course has to be dropped by and have tuition remitted. Judging by earlier posts colleges are going to vary a lot in policy.</p>
<p>The OP surprised me, since it never occurred to me to give either of my kids a full year of parent money up front. This is not a criticism, just an observation. In general my kids receive monthly allotments, although they received a couple of months before start of freshman year to have enough money for books.</p>
<p>One thing we are doing that I think is working is to include textbooks in their budget. Not only does it encourage them to avoid emptying their accounts and risk not having enough money for books, they are learning to be smart frugal shoppers so that more money is left over for discretionary spending.</p>
<p>I wholeheartedly agree though that these questions and approaches are best tailored to each student. A couple of other observations of my kids:</p>
<p><em>Both have at least one friend who is poor. This makes it *much</em> easier for them to be poor too.</p>
<ul>
<li>Part-time work has changed my son’s behavior and approach to money more in a few months than all the years preceding living only on parent money. Now he tends to ask himself whether he should buy something he wants, rather than just make sure he has enough to cover the immediate cost.</li>
</ul>
<p>Wow. I was certainly a saver…but was so paranoid about becoming a spendthrift like an older cousin of mine that I refused to get a credit card and was quite stingy in my personal spending in the words of several relatives. </p>
<p>In fact, it got to the point that I was being scolded by those same relatives for the exact opposite reason as that cousin…“not being willing to spend even on the “necessities”.” Their version of necessities included going to the movies twice a month and buying a no-frills television set.* :(</p>
<p>Things I actually had little time for considering my academic workload, part-time job, extracurriculars, attending free musical performances/academic events, and being out and about on campus. </p>
<p>As for credit hours vs flat fee:</p>
<p>My SLAC charged a flat fee if one took a full load of 12-16 credit hours per semester. </p>
<p>Any less than 12 or greater than 16 was charged $600/credit hour.</p>
<ul>
<li>Here’s a parent tip from my college experience: If you want to maximize your child’s college success and minimize distractions to him/her…DO NOT encourage him/her to bring a TV/gaming console/computer games up with them to college. I’ve lost count of how many college kids sunk their GPAs…including one roommate(Mush addict) because they became all-consumed with TV and/or video/computer games. Wasn’t helped when the prof of our 9 am Mandarin class was disturbed by the sudden frequency of absences and I was asked to notify him to see the Prof about it. :(</li>
</ul>
<p>I think we all agree that $$ management is a life skill that needs be learned and practiced. However, reading varied posts on CC these past years (have learned or confirmed a lot!) I always feel there is a major disconnect. The push to go to top private U. or LAC to “network” and “make life long connections” with the students who come from connected and often times powerful family backgrounds also equals socializing with them on and off campus and during brakes, or you are not making “lifetime relationships” with these peers. Simple fact- those who play together, stay together…otherwise they just take a class or two together. Elite private schools are filled with full pays, and all that means. Therefore, sending a kid off to those schools and not assuming some of the cost of on and off campus expenses isolates the kid, and they are the one who has to stay in on weekends and long weekend breaks. </p>
<p>If you followed the establishing of Harvard’s liberal finaid policy, you may remember that there was pressure to spend some of their endowment to fend off attacks from the senate on their tax free status, but it was also because it was noticed at Harvard there were very clear distinctions between the haves and have nots. Meaning the haves got to do research, EC, volunteer,travel etc. and the kids on aid had to always be working or studying and were thus not able to take full advantage of the “Harvard” experience. </p>
<p>So to really understand the situation, one needs to understand what kind of school the student attends, and if it is in a very expensive area, with many kids who come from families with means and Private - min. wage jobs just might NOT be enough, and perhaps it is more true than not that is how “everyone” lives. Very difficult situation for a freshman in his first semester to keep in proper perspective. The kids on campus from connected families/affluent families/families with access to the upper end of society do have a lot of money to spend, because they did in High School too.</p>
<p>Not saying money management skills don’t need to be taught, or that being real about ones own financial situation is not needed.But what if a Parent lands a “lottery job” (like the lottery schools)- in order to be successful, they need to fit into the prevailing culture they work in. To take advantages of the opportunities to advance, the parent has to spend a significant amount on their presentation of themselves. High quality clothes, good hair cuts, $$ to go out after work for drinks or dinner since that is where most of the action actually happens. Same thing for Elite schools.</p>
<p>Just want to expand the conversation beyond competitive thriftiness, and keep us parents real and always adjusting to the reality of what the goal may be when sending our kids off to school.</p>
<p>^^ ski trips on breaks ? Really ?
Fascinating post, although I admit to finding the described reality just a wee bit revolting.</p>
<p>More than anything though, I am amazed that young college students can have so much disposable cash and not drown from overindulgence or at least fail college. Obviously some do, I’m just surprised it is not the rule. In a way they are being given a rope to hang themselves.</p>