<p>Too broad a statement I see…at my son’s UNI the jobs are few and work/study gets priority because the Gov’t pays half the cost of the salary. At his school there are few to none paid campus jobs for non-work study. Never said finaid=not talking about Paris and museum i.e. smart and worldly), just that one poster said nobody knows if a student is on finaid, and it is rude to ask. That IMHO is an adults world- not the students. But does it matter if one is on Aid? No, but to think it is below the radar on campus is not true. Anyhow, since a lot of kids have staffords at least- that is aid to them so in their minds it doesn’t mean much. They also know when they graduate who HAS to get a job to start paying off the loans ASAP. Again, just my observation with son and family members. YMMV. Peace</p>
<p>Skin in the game: Here is where I decided to use it:
DS had an extremely nice academic scholarship to our excellent state flagship for an engineering school that was in the top 5 in the nation. But he really wanted to go to another, very different school that would be more expensive. He is debt averse. I told him that we would make available to him our out-of-pocket cost for him to attend the flagship and that he would need loans and work to cover the difference at the other school. I figured this would help determine how much he REALLY wanted that other school.</p>
<p>He opted for the more expensive school, was fortunate to get a good job in his field after graduating last year and paid off all his loans in 6 months while living like a pauper. (I did mention he is debt averse, didn’t I?)</p>
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<p>OlympicLady: I don’t have any interest responding to you that’s why I didn’t mention your name with the previous post quote. I put it up as a generic question. But this post is specially for you.</p>
<p>I don’t think I can reason with some one who maintain DS life style according to DS roomates.</p>
<p>OlympicLady, thank you for the welcome! </p>
<p>I do get quite a bit of great knowledge from College Confidential. I would certainly make sure my four kids all graduate with no more than a reasonable amount of debt, and if they were to get into a highly sticky situation or want to do something noble like join the Peace Corps or Americorp we would certainly step in to help. I do feel sometimes in these parent threads there is a lot of diferentiation between 18-21 year olds and 14 year olds. </p>
<p>In our house we are living through a great example, one of our kids a junior decided himself to go to a prestigious school out of state. Like OlympicLady we set a budget of the cost of presigious in state public school plus around 80% of room and board. He is doing great in school and has managed his expenses well and now has decided he wants to come back and teach in state. This requires in state credentialing. To us this expense is based on his decision making and we all agree that the cost is 100% his. Not suprising, he is figuring out one year ahead of time how to do it in 1 semester not the normal 2 because it is at his cost. If I offered to pay, those same off work hours he is researching this would be spent on the couch. The only one who would have benefited had his parents helped would be the school that got a extra semester’s tuition!</p>
<p>I don’t automatically say “loans are bad, go to communtiy college”. The loans can be a great tool for a family to work out college and living expenses. The problem arises when people are taking out these loans when they cannot possibly afford to pay them back. It’s not doing anyone a favor when that happens and the current lending picture is such that it can indeed happen to many students and families alike.</p>
<p>I also have no problem with families that can afford to give their kids amenities and luxuries. Well, maybe I’m a little jealous, and certainly envious. I will say, however, as a parent, that all of us, myself well included, need to watch that we are not setting spending standards too high with our kids so that when they are finally out on their own, they can’t keep up with their set standard of living–set by us rather than by them. You are not doing anyone any favors that way. </p>
<p>I think those families who are well able to give their kids a permanent high standard of living due to inheritances are fine doing this, but those of us who aren’t, and whose kids do not appear to be heading for high paying careers,…teaching austerity might be much more valuable.</p>
<p>I want to give it all to them, and I would if I could. But I can’t.</p>
<p>Good luck, Jym, in trying to get them to cut out the car and/or girlfriend, heh, heh. Age old loves of young men’s lives.</p>
<p>I don’t believe loans are necessarily good or bad. They are necessary if, like blossom, they were used to finance an MBA degree that provided a good return on investment. They may also be useful to motivate otherwise unmotivated students, which is what seems to have happened with Olympic Lady’s son and hbsurfer’s’s kids even when they have the resources for the kid not to have loans. But, it would be simple and probably wrong to generalize from those two experiences to the conclusion that it is generally good or desirable for each kid to have debt, as hbsurfer seems to be doing (and seems to have concluded is appropriate for choosing among job candidates from newbies to CFO candidates). </p>
<p>People who have debt will likely behave in a more risk-averse way than people with no debt. This will include risk-taking to leave a firm but also risk avoidance on the job. Are you arguing, hbsurfer, that risk averse employees perform better?</p>
<p>I have large company clients where people can last a long time by keeping their heads down and not being associated with projects that failed. The fact that they are not associated with projects that blew the lights out and made the company tons of money does not get them fired. </p>
<p>If labor markets are efficient (and blossom and I are deep skeptics here), then I’d guess that fear of failure/fear of losing their jobs would drive these more risk averse people to perform as well as less (or better than?) risk averse folks. But something about this argument doesn’t sit right. I’m just not sure that fear and risk aversion are the way that a company gets great performance. What happens when they pay off their student loans? Does performance decline?</p>
<p>I don’t believe that having skin in the game is good for highly motivated kids who would become more risk averse with debt. If it is of interest, I can share a story about why I think such a debt would be take away from and not enhance to ShawSon’s long-term success.</p>
<p>But, I don’t think whether or not loans are unquestionably good or insisting on lots of paid work is the fundamental point. </p>
<p>The fundamental point is that *all is not equal[\i]. Some of the parents on here (like the scholar I described in post #80) believe that investing in their kids will help them get experiences that will make their resumes superior. If they are right, hbsurfer and other interviewers will want to hire them because they appear to have invested so heavily in building the right skills and experiences. In HS, that might be extra practice for the SATs (the kid with the 2350 is a lot more likely to get in to a more elite institution than one with a 2150) or going to crew camp to become a better rower. In college, it might be carefully chosen jobs/internships (incidentally, how does an interviewer know the difference between a job and an internship?) taken to maximize exposure to the right things and people (he worked in McDonalds last summer but she helped a Goldman Sachs risk manager come up with a more refined way to measure a type of risk). It might be low-paid or no pay research with a professor who subsequently writes a recommendation rather than a higher-paid job.</p>
<p>So, I think we’re both right – all other things equal, the kid with work experience will be hired, but all other things are typically not equal and that’s what a lot of the parents here are thinking when they object to hbsurfer’s views.</p>
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How is it going with teaching your dd how to budget? Weren’t you planning to give her $750/mo allowance and wondering if it was enough? I recall you were trying to teach her to balance her checkbook and manage her credit card (I can’t recall exactly). Is she learning to live within a reasonable budget?</p>
<p>And it looks like hbsurfer has been on cc for 2 years. He/she seems to know the ropes :)</p>
<p>I believe that people expect too much from 18 years old on one hand and way too little on another. I believe that expectations are lopsided. I expected from my kid to do well in school and earn Merit awards as appreciation of our support. There is no way she could have paid wage at any job (she has been fortunate to have very nice positions so far) that anyhow covered her college tuition and expenses although she went to in-state public. So, Merit awards were the only potential for her to actually significatly contribute. We have never given her any allowances in her life. We just spend as much as was needed. She had Merit scholarhip covering significant portion of her private HS tuition also. We never discuss finances within family, never with kids, never with my H. Discussing finances is only bringing too much drama to life, it does not solve anything. We like to live without loans, and we do not have any, no mortgage, no other loans. We would like to keep it this way.</p>
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<p>I was thinking more along the lines of teaching him the value of a dollar. $6/hour for 10 hours a week wiping tables in a restaurant would be fine with me, and he can spend it all on himself if he wants to. I just think it would be healthy for him to know what it’s like to earn money rather than have it given to him.</p>
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<p>It’s certainly different. Providing the children freedom and choices and help them learn the finances right way is different than forcing children through debt and forcing them to give up on choices.</p>
<p>She seems to at least learned that if she can’t budget with in an allowance she can earn more to balance it. She has hold paid internship during the college year, and an IT help desk job along with her commitment to mentoring young girls and holding leadership positions at student council.
She will be earning around ~19K this summer which should provide her a very good cushions to all her budgeting problem.</p>
<p>The way I see it, teaching them to live within a reasonable budget, learning how to manage their money, learn that they can’t eat out at fancy or expensive places a lot or buy expensive clothes is a way to avoid becoming a person who may have the potential to end up running up credit card debt in the future. IMO they should be “forced” to face that they may have to give up choices.</p>
<p>My younger s realized that with the extra cost of having his car on campus this past semester, combined with the cost of having a girlfriend and roommates who didnt always pay him back when they should, that he couldnt do all the fast food eating that he wanted to do. He either had to stop being the “bank/atm for broke roommates”, use his car less or seriously curtail the fast food. Money doesn’t grow on trees. We give him a very reasonable allowance that was calculated with his input last year. He needs to learn to live within it, to avoid being own who will need to take out loans in the future (eg a car loan, etc). Older s has learned to save very well, and had enough in the bank that when he had to replace his totalled 2 yr old car 
he was able, with the $ from the insu co and money from his savings, to pay cash. We are proud of him. He’s learned to manage his finances well. We have younger son using mint.com to watch his spending habits. Also trying to get him to hang onto receipts so he can watch his credit card more closely and also have them for returns, etc.</p>
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<p>No one is saying that there is unlimited account and that’s why there is a monthly allowance. Now in my view it makes more sense to provide children opportunity to learn about finances and budgeting by giving freedom. Everyone have to make a decision between different choices. You say your children are smart then treat them like that. On one hand you think they are smart enough to attend top colleges but dumb enough to not understand budgeting.</p>
<p>How come putting children through crushing debts is better? You are restricting choices and telling them that you feel they are dumb enough to not able to budget on their own.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure about your DS girlfriend but I’ve always told DD that never take obligation from anyone. She should be paying her share whenever she goes out with anyone. She likes to go out to fancy restaurants but she is able to manage her budget well.</p>
<p>So please don’t tell me there is a cost of having a girlfriend.</p>
<p>No one here that I see is using the words “smart” or “dumb” to describe their kids. But “freedom” can have big consequences. We set a budget that was based on real costs and we expect DS to live within it. He had a real eye-opening experience when he realized how much $$ he’d pulled from savings (little bit here, little bit there, but it sure added up to a LOT). Learning to budget is a very, VERY important life skill, just like learning anything. Giving a kid a huge allowance isn’t really teaching them anything, IMO, except maybe that someone will bail them out if they overspend. Our older s is totally off the payroll (though I am paying for some car repairs as his bday present). Younger s will be continuing the life lesson that he cannot count on the “Bank of Mom and Dad”. We are not saddling them with any college debt, but there are expenses they are responsible for.</p>
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You have got to be kidding. I suspect that his gf pays for some of her expenses when they go out, but he is a gentleman, and when he asks her to an event or to go out, he usually offers to pay. Chivalry is not dead where he lives. If he invited her out and expected them to go Dutch all the time, that might not be a relationship she would like. Do you really believe your dau has not let a guy buy her a meal or a Starbucks or whatever? Really?? Sorry, but that is not likely.</p>
<p>Weird-- how did those posts get out of sequence??? </p>
<p>And as an aside, asking a girl out and offering to pay does not mean she has some sort of “obligation” if she accepts. Did you expect your DW to pay her way on all your dates when you were dating? If yours was perchance an arranged marriage, then perhaps that is why this is hard for you to understand.</p>
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<p>I’m married to my college sweetheart so I know how most boys feel about spending on girls. They actually feel the same as you and your DS ‘cost of having a girl friend’.
I never considered it as a cost of having a GF. I used to spend money on my GF because I wanted to and not because I had to. The two notion are different thinking, you and your DS seems to think that you have to, which is wrong.</p>
<p>I always taught DD to spend her own money on dates except if someone ask you on a first date or on special occasion like celebrating birth day or an achievement. She goes on lunches/dinner with lots of friends (boys and girls) from her high school as well as college and spend on her share of expenses.
You and your DS won’t have considered this a cost if your DS GF was contributing equally on the dates. I don’t want DD BF or any friends feel that way. The problem with that thinking is that boys spending money with that mind set wants to get something in return and girls might be obligated to succumb. If girls are contributing equally on dates then boys don’t dare to exploit them.</p>
<p>I don’t want anyone to think of DD as a cost. She is as valuable asset as any of the boys.
I would be mad if her BF thinks he has a cost of having DD as GF.</p>
<p>You can teach a kid everything you know about finances and budgeting. Whether he chooses to do anything good with it is a whole other issue. My two oldest were great in college in terms of budget,staying under COA, not overdrawing their accounts, etc. When they got out–disaster. And I’m still trying to get things through their thick heads. But they have gotten better, slowly. I think that when it’s been an old idea and it gets brought home, it helps them. To suddenly throw it all into their laps, which too often happens with kids and finances when they go to college is expecting a lot of a young adult during years that are often volatile and self destructive.</p>
<p>But they can use reminding, just as we can. Heck, I need help to keep things in line myself. </p>
<p>I am glad that mine are free of college loans, but they would not have hesitated to taken them out had we asked them to do so. They are totally trusting of us in this area. It would have been one other thing to juggle in their budgets now, and frankly things are lean without a loan repayment. What it would have taught them is that how serious it is to take out any loans. They are getting this second hand from friends who are struggling with loan payments and less help from their parents than we are giving. They also see friends who are living the good life after college since their parents can afford to carry them in terms of apartment and life style. Wish I could. </p>
<p>Yes, girlfriends can be expensive. If they are going “out”, it can run into money. For my son, he lives far enough away from his gf. that it is an expense, getting together. Now, I have another one who has girlfriends pay for him as he seems to have the taste for well to do young women with parents footing a lot of the bill. He’s between girlfriends right now–anyone looking for a starving artist to subsidize through your daughter?</p>
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<p>This is outrightly offensive and cause of date rapes and other forced encounters because boys think they spend on girls and so they own them and can do what ever to recoup this expense.</p>
<p>This mentality is what I’ve told DD very clearly and told her to spend on her dates as much as her BF. So that neither the BF nor his family any day feel that DD as a GF is expensive. DD has expensive taste and like to go to good restaurants but pay her own bills.</p>
<p>Please teach your DS to not spend if the mentality is that ‘it’s a highly expensive item’ because then they will try to get worth of such expenses and resort to date rapes. Don’t teach boys to treat girls as objects.</p>