<p>does anyone every really listen to parents' advice...I'm 50 & still tend to disagree with my folks (nicer about it, though...and at least now I usually listen to their points before I disagree!)</p>
<p>Speaking of Cash...that's the #1 thing my kids always needed at college! Besides that, it was the medicine/first aid boxes which saw the most depletion when they brought the stuff home at end of the year. Boys never used any tape, or much other in the office supply stuff...</p>
<p>While not the most valuable thing-
The morning we were about to leave, at the last minute, I suggested S take a sportsjacket, shirt, tie, pants, and shoes. He pooh-poohed the idea but I stuck it in the trunk anyway.
About a week later, he called to say how glad he was to have those things, because he was joining a fraternity and they had to start dressing for dinners/meetings. He's also used the clothes to interview for several organizations and jobs.</p>
<p>Credit card....I know lots of people are against teenagers with credit cards but ours got it with the understanding that it was for emergency kind of things that his regular bank acct. wouldn't cover. It has saved him on more than one occasion...car broke down and had to be towed (twice), glasses broke and had to buy new ones, illness that required seeing a regular Dr. in town rather than college health center, all those road trips where anything can happen...things that require payment then and there that his college bank acct. just wouldn't cover.</p>