mom2three

Reverse "fronting"

We are paying what we can for tuition, room and board. Our kid who has kept his scholarship should graduate debt-free. Our kid who lost his scholarship will have some loans to pay back. To a bank. Our hope is to help pay back the portion of the loans that went towards tuition, if we are able to do so. Son 3 hasn't hit college yet, so we really don't know what we'll be able to do in that respect, and our son with loans knows it.

The idea that kids are going to pay back an unspecified amount of money at some unspecified time after graduation is certainly optimistic. I'm too familiar, through friends and family, with this kind of "fronting" leading to discord and disappointment, to be as optimistic as the OP.

If the OP's daughter really won't get a job, is she getting up by 8:00 every day (freeloading on friends and socializing notwithstanding) to work around the house? Laundry, vacuuming, heavy lifting?

SIDE NOTE: my boys are AWAY AT SCHOOL, taking a part-time classes, and not working a lot. So I am in a very similar boat to the OP (except for the finding them jobs they are too good for thing). It just doesn't drive me as crazy since they are NOT HERE. Back in one of the earlier "kids home for summer" threads I was one of the "bad" parents who was happy they only come home for a week here and there. This is the reason. They make me WAY WAY WAY less nuts from a distance. :-)

Chedva

Stop fronting. If she is supposed to pay for half her tuition and half her books, she should pay it. You pay half, and then hand her the bill and say, "Here, honey, here's what you owe the bursar." Have that conversation now. "OK, D, you apparently have enough money to begin paying for your half. It starts coming out of your account for this year; you don't get to "save" it and pay us back in the future. We won't talk about last year yet; we'll devise a repayment plan later. But from now on, we pay half and you pay half. How you pay your half is your business and I'm out of it." Maybe if she realizes that it's not just promised, but that money actually comes out of her account, it may dawn on her that she has to find a way to replenish that account.

If she is still not working, what is she doing to help you? If my d were home for any extended period, she'd have a job - cleaning bathrooms, shopping for food, making dinner for the family. Is she required to do anything like that? (Oh, sorry, I see mom2three already got that one!)

laxmom

You cannot be the one getting a job for your daughter. She has to want to get one herself - one that she wants and will be interested in. I know this has been stated previously but your daughter has to want to be self-sufficient. Apparently she is not getting your message that she is supposed to be.

I didn't front my kids either. Both started college with the knowledge/understanding that if there are loans, and there are, that THEY would apply for them. If they did their work in school, had part-time jobs in the summer and were basically responsible, when they graduated DH & I would help pay them off. S1 is doing that now and S2 just graduated this week and will be going off to grad school. Both worked every summer and this money went to pay for their living expenses during the school year, car insurance and activities. No exceptions.

ADad

OP, since your D has extra time, how about having her work at a soup kitchen, tutor underprivileged kids, help at a youth shelter, do trail maintenance at a local nature sanctuary, etc.?

swimcatsmom

I agree you should not front the loans. I don't think they are probably 'real' to your daughter if it is just a vague repay me later concept. Between scholarships and some need based grants we don't have to come up with too much money for college for our daughter. She was offered some subsidized loans. We have some money set aside for college that would have covered the loans but we had her take them out anyway. They are in her name though we plan to pay them off for her with the money she has saved us with the scholarships as long as she maintains those scholarships (or unless she goes on to med school or grad school in which case the money will go toward grad/med). Having real loans in her name makes her more aware of the financial side as she does not like the idea of debt. She thinks she has a 'butt load' of loans with a little over $4000 cumulative for her freshman and upcoming sophomore years I think if we fronted the same money with a vague 'pay us back eventually' they would totally be off her radar.

natmicstef

From my understanding, the OP would not be that concerned if the loans she has fronted were not paid back if the child had a work ethic...it is the lack of work ethic that is frustrating her. Perhaps munchkin you could talk with her again about the importance of picking up skills and work experiences and stress that your expectation is that she must work. The fact that apparently your husband does not feel it is necessary to push her makes it somewhat more difficult to force the point or give ultimatums.

I like Adad's idea..since money is no object (for D), voluntary work will allow her to do something useful, for free.

ucsd_ucla_dad

I certainly wouldn't do that. In fact, I'd probably encourage her to do more to get her out of bed, out of the house, and maybe spending her money and realizing that getting a job to refill the bank account is a good idea. The age of 20 is a little too old to 'forbid' to go out with friends anyway.

I also like the 'Adad' suggestion of volunteering if she's not working but I guess you might end up with the same problem of her refusing to do it.

munchkin

Thank you everyone for their input and suggestions.

I have a spread sheet tracking the money we/they had spent since going to college. As far as we are concerned it is a tool for us to hopefully teach them responsibility and ownership towards future and adulthood. But I do have the figures fairly precisely, and if they do default, it is going to come out of their wedding, first car, first house, inheritance, whatever. Also, she had made comments in her first year about the amount of money she is going to owe us, so I think she is well aware of that.

I am winging it because my parents paid for everything when they were able to, tuition, car, everything. What we am doing is rather unusual among my friends too.

Our family have a tradition of volunteering and both kids did some starting in junior high though they are not passionate about it. We moved here last June and had so much dealing with the move ( we also went away for 2.5 months at the beginning of this year ) that we did not connect up local charities so far. But that is an idea I would like to pursue, and not just for dd.

natmistef : Thank you, you understood my frustration perfectly. Paying her way is nice, but it's really the lack of motivation (in my eyes) that upset me most. You caught the situation perfectly about the family dynamics, my husband is much more indulgent towards our children than I am, sometimes it is not all the children's fault when dad is so ready with money, car rides, in general catering to them. It is a source of tension between us. My husbands understands and even agrees with my point of view, but then he forgets .

swimcatsmom

lol munchkin - that just struck me as funny

It does sound like you are kind of between a rock and a hard place especially if your circle of friends do not share your approach. Most of our friends the kids do have to contribute financially out of necessity and work summer jobs because they need the money. My daughter also rapidly gets bored if she is sitting around with nothing to do - she would go nuts if she did not have a summer job. I think I would still expect her to have a financial stake even if we had the money to pay outright. But that is like me saying I would never ever spend $13,000 on a purse (a discussion my daughter and I had after being shocked by prices in a store in Chicago and deciding to search out the most expensive purse) even if I were a multi millionaire. I don't think I would but it is probably difficult for me to see it from the perspective of having the sort of money.

Maybe you just need to sit down with your daughter and tell her that you would like to see her do something constructive (even part time) during the summer and ask if she has any ideas. But I do think you need to let her take the lead of choosing something to do and following up on it. I don't think getting her jobs or signing her up to volunteer is productive. She really needs to do that herself. Good luck.

Chedva

Of course it is! But most people need a reason to work hard - heck, if I didn't need the money, I wouldn't go to work every day! You want some "internal motivation" that says, "Oh, I have to get a job because I want to work" - for most people, and apparently for your d, that's not going to happen.

People work due to an external motivation - money. (I am assuming that she's doing well enough in college that there's a bit of internal motivation to learn.)

ucsd_ucla_dad

It's good that the expenses are all tracked and laid out but it still might not be so tangible to her, kind of like how many students casually enter into huge college debt because it's not real to them, and she still has enough money in the bank to get by without a job.

I understand that she might not have enough money to pay the whole tab now but do you think it would help if you required her to pay a percentage of the tab now, up front, and as it goes along? Part of the idea is for her to see her bank account getting depleted enough to give her motivation to get a job.

Pseudonym

If she's decided she'd rather have free time than money, and you're only providing for the essentials, then what exactly is the problem? It's her time, so why get caught up in creating artificial consequences when there's a perfectly good real consequence--no work= no income. If that equation sounds good to her, so be it... if she's a full time student during the year and making timely progress toward a degree, I don't see anything wrong with this picture. It seems like you've already done pretty much everything a parent can to instill work ethic and provide opportunities; if she doesn't want them and is willing to accept the natural consequence of that, that's her right. The end of the semester can be really draining, so maybe she'll snap out of it on her own once the novelty of getting a full night's sleep wears off.

calmom

Munchkin, with all due respect I think the problem you are seeing is simply a matter that you have spoiled your daughter. Maybe that is typical of kids who come from families with plenty of money -- certainly it is something that my daughter has commented about concerning some of her classmates from wealthy families (the kind who come from families who shop at stores like swimcatsmom found with the $13,000 purse)

You wrote: My kids do not expect money from me for wedding, car, house, etc. I have told my daughter quite clearly that I think the parents paying for daughter's wedding thing is a vestige of a time before women were expected to have college educations and careers -- fine for my own mom who went to college for her Mrs. degree, and dropped out to marry at age 19, but not something that I got from my own family who subsidized my J.D. degree, nor something I will be paying for in the future. Paying for college is a huge sacrifice for me -- and the undergrad degree is the end of the road for my daughter in terms of expectations of parental support.

So I see that among those with accumulated wealth there is a kind of collateral in the sense of future expectations that doesn't exist for those of us who rely on our middle-class incomes to meet our regular expenses. We're more used to settling up all debts in the short-term because we don't have money to last over the long term. Our kids don't expect us to "front" for them because they know that we don't have the money -- I know that my daughter's eyes opened very wide when she saw the bursar's bill one year and she exclaimed, "mom! how will you ever pay all that money?" -- and that's with financial aid. (I pay about half of the bill for tuition & housing & use PLUS loans for the rest) Given that situation, there really is no discussion or argument about the fact that my d. is paying out of pocket for all spending money, including necessities like books, transit fare, even food.

The motivation is there, without question, simply because my kids have grown up with the understanding that there is no money to be counted on from the parental end.

I don't have an answer for you. Working class kids develop a good work ethic because they see the connection between work and money every step of the way growing up. My daughter wanted a bicycle at age 8 and I bought it for her by putting it on layaway and coming in every few weeks to pay another $20 or so toward it -- she got her bike but she also saw how long it took to get it. And of course she could also see the direct connection between my work and my receipt of a pay check and another $20 put down toward the bike.

I've often felt grateful that I have always had enough money to provide the basics (food, clothing, house) without worrying, but never enough for luxuries, precisely because it was easy to raise my kids with a good work ethic without risk of spoiling them. They have always had to rely on their own resources for extras. (Sometimes they got lucky - my d. is very petite and was smaller than most of her friends, so she had the cutest clothes that her friends would give her after they had outgrown them.)

Suffice it to say that the way you are doing it is not really going to work, especially if your husband is there undermining your efforts with his generosity. (The one thing my kids know for sure is that they will never see a dime from their Dad - my ex). The reason is simply that the money is there for your daughter whether she earns it or not, and she can see very clearly that it is -- a running tally that might come out of her "inheritance" or future down payment on a house if she doesn't pay you back is not really a debt at all ... though I can certainly see it one day causing a lot of anger and resentment on one side or another.

mom60

I have a couple of thoughts. Since she has worked before maybe she is resentful of the fact you are finding jobs for her and when she finds one on her own she will work. The other message we send when we do things for our children that they can do for themselves is that they are not capable.

I might also wonder if your D is depressed. Moving home, not being motivated. Most college students when given the opportunity to live away from home would not even consider coming back into the home and commuting unless finances required it. Just something to consider.
I also have a freshman home for the summer and each day that he is still sleeping at 1 in the afternoon gets my blood racing. He is also "looking" for a job. He was open but not happily to suggestions from us as to how he go about the job search. He had his way and was determined to do it his way. My spouse had his boundaries regarding job, car and spending money. He was not giving him any. No job no use of the car. Taking things away works for some kids and not others. My son is fine with no money from us. He has few needs. If he can't drive he skateboards or gets a ride from a friend. He is resourceful. Frustrating to deal with this kid. He is starting a job on tuesday. One he found on his own.

Shrinkrap

Well OP, I think my D will be like yours, and most of the threads I'm reading seem to make it sound like it's too late to change what we have done so far. I have read suggestions to set limits now, but I am having a hard time imagining how it will turn out. For example, my D will graduate next week, and agreed to contribute 3k by way of work, loan or scholarship starting in August. Unfortunately, the job she would have loved and was willing to go afer fell through just a week ago. She doesn't seem to have a sense of how much initiative it will take to move on from here. I was able to get her to apply for a job on line, but she seemed genuinely surprised when I suggested she might not get it, and there could be more to it than that. She is frugal too, but does use gas money, so soon she will have to face THOSE $30-50 facts. But the idea of presenting her with a bill from the bursar, knowing she cant/won't earn enough, and then accepting her not going to school this year, is not something I see happening.So she may end up with a small loan. Will this help motivate her? Don't know, but I think I will resent her "relaxing" less. I certainly see some things I can do differently for my son ( who is NOT frugal; so he get's reminded about the facts of life all the time), but is it really too late for our girls?


To be fair, when my D is doing what she WANT'S to do; musical theatre, chapel leadership, she is relentless......