How much spending mo why do you allow your freshman college student?
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Anonymous
Why does he need Uber, does he live off campus? |
Anonymous
| Give him the spending money in a way he can't overspend. E.g. move it to his checking account, rather than making it a CC limit that he has to track. That way he's less likely to overspend. |
Anonymous
| None? My parents covered basic expenses but told me to get a job and save for spending money if I wanted any. To be fair, they always said this and stuck to it so I had a part time job in HS and started saving then. I’d get cash from relatives for holidays and birthday through college. We plan on doing the same for ours. It was a great life lesson. DH’s parents did similar. |
Anonymous
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When you say food I am unclear. Does he have a meal plan, or is the 200-300 his only food budget for the month? If he has a meal plan, it is extremely generous (that’s 2 meals out a week at $50/meal!) but if he needs to buy all his own food and groceries it is low (I am an adult woman, not a growing boy, and my grocery budget before marriage was $300).
It’s also reasonable to ask for a rough expenses list - that way if it’s $200 on eating out you can gently ask questions to see if you are supporting just your son, or your son and his friend group. |
Anonymous
"Gently?" He's a college man, not a medically fragile newborn. |
Anonymous
| Your son is probably going out a lot. I spent more than that on entertainment/food/"going out"/ cabs in DC in the early 90s. I also had a job to supplement my parents allowance. Have him get a job. If he can overspend $300 a month, he has time for a job. I also agree with a PP to transfer cash to a bank account if you are trying to instill "saving". |
Anonymous
Look, based on Ops query, I said gentle for the parent, not the kid. I don’t know if this parent could handle blunt. |
Anonymous
| hmm mine will be a freshman this coming fall so maybe there are realities to college life I'm not aware of yet, but my assumption has been that we will cover all the necessary academic costs (in dorm so has a meal plan) and her saved up money from summer jobs etc would be her resource for extra fun money. has your kid not worked and accumulated any savings? If my kid has no money set aside due to other circumstances I'd probably look at a few hundred a month max. |
Anonymous
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I think this post is going to draw a lot of people who didn't have spending money from parents and are well off themselves but want to make sure their kid earns their "fun money" in college (but also don't have to worry about loans etc).
I'll be a slightly different voice. I was a scholarship kid at an expensive, pretty tough to get into university. 1st in family to go to college, 2nd gen American. This was early 00s so it might be a bit skewed with specific numbers but I left college with 24 K in loans, parents paid about 24K total (divorced) and the rest I earned in scholarships. Worked summers 50 hrs a week but didn't work during school year except intermittently because I tanked 2 early semesters and needed to basically get all As to bring it back up the last 5 semesters. So I lived on a pretty tight budget for clothes, some of my books, gas for borrowed summer car, computer (I was in a greek organization- a dorky one!- but dues were really cheap). I had an emergency CC but never bough anything on it except a sweatshirt and 2 dinners (asked first) in 4 years. But my parents were in service industry jobs and worked their ass off to save for my school and my siblings (since they got less academic merit $) and it was just a sort of a sense of pride for them to be able to put an extra $200-250 bucks in my hand in August and at Xmas break so that I could "have fun", not to keep up with the Joneses obviously, but to let myself feel like I could also have some of the college experience more than I could afford on my own. It was nice. I spent all of it  Mostly on beer and pizza and bagels and the occasional sale tank top from the mall. I'd already learned to save and what not with my own jobs very early on, etc
I got lucky in that my friend group included a huge range of people who were on full rides and had nothing at home to people who had anything they wanted and parents cut a $40K check every year to the school for them but weren't really into being flashy or so influenza'd that they didn't understand other SES situations. My DH came from humble beginnings too and while his friends were great guys, they were all clueless rich kids with unlimited budgets- that made things more stressful for him. |
Anonymous
| I worked every summer to save for books for the year and spending money. No allowance. My mom was working hard to pay tuition, room, and board. Your kid needs to get a job. |
Anonymous
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OP - we give our kid a few hundred dollars a month for whatever -- probably a combination of uber, uber eats, toiletries, whatever.
But we have made it clear that what we give him is it --- he has to pay for anything more out of whatever money he earns or saves. So even though we are generous, we are also not flexible. Even though he has a pretty reasonable budget (in my opinion) he also can't over spend. You should just decide what you are ok with and then stick to your limit. He can work or save if he wants to spend more. |
Anonymous
You had a summer job during CoViD? |
Anonymous
How do you expect them to get to the airport, get to restaurants, get to museums, etc? |
Anonymous
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$200-$300/ mth with meal plan
$500-$600/mth without meal plan |
Anonymous
Yeah, sure, OP's kid is spending all his money on museums! That's the ticket! |