<p>yea, I agree and I understand, I'm just questioning the motive a bit.. there's been a few "my parents owe me kids" lately and kids seem more than willing to spend parent money over their own. There's this feeling that parents should never adjust the money, unless it's upward. That you've spent these dollars on me before, and you should now.... maybe folks need a chance to bank a bit .</p>
<p>My question is if they are saying here's the max we can afford, working within that framework..because maybe they've already figured the milk savings, the private school savings, etc.. or did they just have x lying around in the couch cushions...</p>
<ol>
<li>Son was 1/4 of the household but evidently consumed 1/3 to 2/5th of the food. Our grocery bills have dropped by that much since he left. </li>
<li>When we eat out, again, 1/3 less to do so. </li>
<li>I no longer pay transit expenses. No bus passes, no train passes. I have even had him pay for his transportation to visit, since he has more money than I do, and part of his aid was for travel expenses. </li>
<li>This is going to sound really tacky, but when gift occasions come around, I spend less, because as we say at our house, "And for your gift, you get...<em>college</em>!" I don't have to throw birthday parties any more, I didn't make him a halloween costume, I don't feel tempted to spend on little things for him. No movie tickets, etc. </li>
<li>His cell phone was costing $50.00 a month. It was a regional service that doesn't work at his new school, so we had it turned off. He doesn't have one there; I paid for a skype account instead. </li>
<li>No medical copays, no medications, no health stuff. </li>
</ol>
<p>I think in total it's somewhere around $200.00 less a month out of my pocket, and $400.00 less out of my partners. However, I also get $200 less in child support, so that's a wash for me personally. </p>
<p>As someone else sort of alluded to, I'm the sort of parent that never agreed to be spending as much on him now that he's at school as I was when he was at home. This past summer his child support money ended and it was crunch time for us until he left.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No medical copays, no medications, no health stuff.>></p>
</blockquote>
<br>
<p>Just curious...how are you covering your college student for health related issues? Our kids' college either required health coverage for the student from the home, OR their plan which was about $1500 per year. AND we still have to pay for the kids to go to the docs with copays and they still have prescriptions to buy. Are your kids responsible for these costs?</p>
<p>We havent seen much of a difference in home expensed since our DS went off to college. Utilities-nada. Food-we may eat out one additional time/week which makes up for grocery spending.
Honestly the only savings we see are in auto/medical insurace, about $1600/yr additional and some miscellaneous hs costs like fundraisers, traveling and attending in state competitions, etc. Nothing big.</p>
<p>thumper, our son's college insurance coverage costs us about $850/yr and we chose this because of the availability of local md's and hospitals.</p>
<p>Walt:
It depends quite a bit on where you will be attending school. You will need to factor in traveling expenses. If it's close to home, the expenses will not be very significant; but if it's not within driving distance and especially if it's in a small town with few options for flying, they can come up to quite a bit. </p>
<p>As for savings, we saved on gas and car insurance when S1 attended college over 100 miles away. We saved on heat and hot water; on milk and food more generally. He stopped going to summer camps, so that was a saving of $3000.
You should also consider what you can earn during academic year and during summer. If you work the fairly standard 10 hours a week on work-study, you could be earning around $100 a week.</p>
<p>All good thoughts.
More from the parental side:
I've heard from some parents who have students in college already, and they've been surprised at the costs of students' "discretionary spending," even if they're on a meal plan. Some parents do weekly infusions into student accounts because the students can't budget for the month.
That ain't happening for my kid. One of her college lessons will definitely be how to budget for a month at a time, to start, and then for longer terms as time goes by. Any end-of-month phone calls saying, "I'm out of money," will be answered with a tough-love, "Sorry."
Back in my day (you knew that was coming), I had to earn all my discretionary spending (we called it beer money, but I know now Starbucks factors in greatly as well). It definitely changes the social and learning climate for the student.
I hope I can do better for my kid, but I think she understands it will be a balancing act, where I need to be able to continue to fund retirement so I'm not living off her if/when I'm 70.
To add to the difficulty of discussions: many parents are reluctant to talk the actual numbers with other parents, either because they're embarrassed and feeling too indulgent/extravagant or they don't want to enter financial grounds that might make someone else feel bad. But some kind of baseline is good to know.
Good discussions to be having now. Good luck, Walt. Sounds like you're on the right track. These talks can be educational and uniting, not dividing, as long as you remember your parents' future economic health will affect you, and your potential children, in 10-20-30 years.</p>
<p>A big difference for us was that the kids started working for pay once they hit college age, part-time on campus and full-time in summer, with a few exceptions for circumstance. That was the most meaningful difference. Before that, we didn't let them take paying jobs during the school year because we weren't sure they could excel academically and work. Perhaps we underestimated them there, but anyway, it was great when they hit college never to utter the word "allowance" again.</p>
<p>And we never buy retail, except electronics. If you want to show your folks a big difference, figure out how to buy all your clothing from Ebay. It works especially well for men. My H and sons wear $200 designer shirts obtainable for $20; my D buys designer jeans for $8. The male fit is easier to comprehend than the female, so I don't do it, but for the men it is amazing. People are selling blazers worn a few times worth $900 for $50. If someone owns a $900 blazer, he doesn't throw it on the floor; it's always cleaned and hung properly until someone gets bored of it. Jobbers sell them. If you figure out how to clothe yourself off of ebay, you can look handsome and save thousands of dollars. Well, we bought my car off of ebay (a used Cadillac) so I helped that way. You can also do your office supplies, dorm linens, everything else this way with advance planning. Figure it out and show your folks; they might be impressed!</p>
<p>My kids knew their discretionary spending, along with books, was coming out of summer earnings or other source (not us.) This definitely helped in the budgeting area of their education. No infusions from us! We do give S his food money rather than use a food plan--it works out to be cheaper than what the college would've charged. Again, he knows how much it's going to be; if he spends more, it's out of his discretionary funds (see above.)</p>
<p>Opie, again, I have nothing to prove to you. My parents have told me that they will pay for my education even if that entails them accruing debt on my behalf. That's all that you need to know. Secondly, don't you have anything better to do, than hang out in a high school kid's thread? Is it really your place to question my "motive"? Either contribute productively to the thread or find a better use of your time.</p>
<p>For those who have given input, I greatly appreciate it, and I'll be talking to my parents about this to see what we can do.</p>
<p>I want to add, that this isn't a case of me feeling "entitled" to their assistance. But rather, my family hasn't been in the greatest financial situation and as I said, my parents aren't the best with handling money. They're upfront with their finances, and they've asked me for input in the past.</p>
<p>They WANT to help in ANY way they can, as I said before, even if that means entailing (more) debt. Instead, what I'm trying to do, is to show them that it may be possible to help me out with school without taking out loans. This was THEIR offer!</p>
<p>Wow.. first of all walt99, RELAX. For one thing, you're in the "Parents Forum" and not the "high school" area.</p>
<p>My parents are definitely saving quite a bit when it comes to food after I left. While I was 1/5 of the family, I was eating probably closer to 1/2 of the food each week. </p>
<p>Also, they are saving on gas for the car though I think my brother probably eats up just as much as I did if not more so maybe they aren't saving there.</p>
<p>They are saving on ink for the printer. I had a lot more papers and projects to do than my brother does. </p>
<p>Their phone bill has actually increased because they decided to get a family plan instead of my brother and I having pre-paid phones. I was paying for my phone at probably 15-20 bucks a month. Now it costs them 17 bucks a month for my phone.</p>
<p>While there will be some savings, it would be a mistake to depend too much on them. Your parents and you will need a cushion against unexpected emergencies. If your textbooks are currently provided free, they won't be at your college, and that will be a fairly significant expense, perhaps up to $1000 per year. So be conservative in your estimate of possible savings.</p>
<p>And you're hanging out in the adult area of the pool, the water's a little deeper here. If you don't have your water wings on, don't come in..;)</p>
<p>If they've told you they will pay what they can, even to the point of taking on debt, why are you trying to find more? </p>
<p>yes, in the adult world we sometimes ask questions, sometimes it's to determine motive. </p>
<p>It seems based on what you've posted they are going to do what they can, so I don't understand the need to find more.. unless they are going to do what they can for a certain school and you're trying to show them how they can afford another? </p>
<p>Fess up now.... don't come here with partial secrets or half truths and ask parents... we know better. </p>
<p>"My parents have told me that they will pay for my education even if that entails them accruing debt on my behalf"</p>
<p>so why even ask the question of other parents? You can't honestly see where that statement makes this post sound a bit fishy? What extra money are you looking for, if they are willing to do this? Why the need?</p>
<p>Walt didn't say it was a kid's board, he asked why come to a kid's thread to make vague accusations, like:</p>
<p>
[quote]
Fess up now.... don't come here with partial secrets or half truths and ask parents... we know better.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>when nothing he has said has warranted that? I think he had reason to get defensive; he asked a realistic question that many people had helpful answers on, then got slammed because of insinuations that I cannot find any basis for in his posts. Sure, any poster can do that if he wants; some people enjoy a chance to gotcha others. I just don't see what Walt said to be doubted; he's been pretty straightforward with his situation and questions.</p>
<p>To be honest, all of the savings are illusory and just reflect moving the money from one pocket to the other. If the kid buys a bottle of advil and it costs $4 is your family unit "wealthier" because the kid earned the money and paid for the bottle vs. you paying for it????</p>
<p>Yes, kid off the car insurance. But coming home, even infrequently, is an Amtrak ticket and the occasional taxi back to campus from the station if he were getting home after midnight. Once he did a ride-share but by the time he paid for his share of gas-- it's still money. Getting around via public transportation isn't terribly expensive, but he used public transportation at home most of the time so that's a wash.</p>
<p>For sure our grocery bill went down, but feeding a kid at school can't possibly be as economical as feeding a kid at home. I have 30 years of experience running a household and buying in bulk; kid doesn't own a car or have a large freezer so can't buy cheerios or chopped meat on sale at Costco- and he tried lugging a huge bottle of detergent home on the subway but it's more trouble than it's worth. </p>
<p>Ditto on medical; the co-pay is the same whether kid is seeing the family doc or the college physician.</p>
<p>We've run the household pretty frugally for the most part so I can't say we have fewer leftovers. We've always kept the house cold and worn heavy sweaters so the absence of one or more people doesn't really result in much savings.</p>
<p>Bottom line for us-- what you save on the kid not living at home you end up spending on maintaining him/her at college. However- it feels nice knowing that parties, beer, movies, etc. come out of his earnings and don't come out of a $20 bill that used to magically get sucked out of my wallet!</p>
<p>Well, of course that's true, Blossom, but I thnk the thinking here is that we know what the price of that food is going to be at school--there it is sitting on the college bill. But that price isn't being just added onto the current family expenses, because some of those will fall slightly. Thus, if, you are staring at a 45K college bill (yucchh) the question is, is that 45K a totally new expense, or are some expenses going down, lowering the in-house costs that the 45 K is being added to. So, yeah, the savings are "illusory" in one sense, but an actual change in outlay in another. If S's absense cuts my food bill by 2000, then, if I were paying 45k (shudder, luckily, I'm not) the net outlay goes down to 43; if heat/hot water go down another thousand, then it's down to 42, etc. that's 12K over 4 years. For a smaller EFC, that 4 yr/12K might actually represent a difference worth noting. Especially if there's other bills also that go down--tuition, gas, etc. that others here have noted.</p>
<p>In my "frugal 'r' us" world, every savings like that is duly noted and striven for--it's that kind of attention to details that has made our college payment system work out.</p>
<p>Opie, quit being obnoxious. The kid asked a legit question that his PARENTS asked HIM, he came to the source (other parents) to get the answer. And this is a topic that has come up in conversation several times between myself and other first-time college parents. We were pleasantly surprised and the drop in the grocery bill, and having to go to the store less. Also in how much less messy the house gets, less laundry/towels, etc. </p>
<p>Walt, call your auto insurance broker and ask what the deal is when you go to college (assuming you're living away at school and aren't bringing a car your first year). The rules differ from state to state. We have all 3 cars in our household on one policy (we have 3 drivers, including DS). Where I live, there is no discount. However, our broker told us to take DS OFF the insurance when he left for college. He has to sign a form stating that he understands he has NO insurance when he is removed, he cannot drive ANYONE's car AT ALL. Then we call her to put him back on when he returns home. We took him off in August, put him back on for 5 days in Oct, then took him off, put him back on for 6 days at Thanksgiving, now he's off again until Xmas. The insurance company adjusts our bill every time and has not complained, and the broker assures us this is not a problem. I figured out that it costs between $3 and $4 per day for DS's insurance. So multiplying that by the number of days he is away at school (he is about 300 miles away), we're saving about $800/year.</p>
<p>As for groceries, if you're 1/3 of the household, they can probably save 1/3 of their costs while you're away.</p>