<p>Consolation, does your son work in the kosher dining room? DS says it’s the only place for a healthy meal but it’s expensive. I can add money to the plan but it seems to make more sense to give DS the money as many restaurants are no more expensive.</p>
<p>Linda, Dartmouth is very aware the kids are unhappy with the meal plan. It just amazed us they would require a meal plan of even those who live off campus! DS has asked what the reasoning is and was told that because of the small size of the college it was necessary to require plans and charge high prices to maintain variety and quality. I guess I buy that.</p>
<p>And on the sports drink front, I do want DS to get those electrolytes but I took the poster’s advice who suggested ordering powder!</p>
<p>If your son has a friend with a car, perhaps they can do a Walmart or Costco run where he can get his gatorade by the case. </p>
<p>My D says stick to bottled water because the tap water is really horrible and there are still some clay pipes so when they flush the system, there are sediments in the water.
I could not even remotely tell you that my D has ever even eaten at the Kosher dining room during her 4 years at Dartmouth, however, I can say that it is definitely not the only place for a health meal (although good pizza at Molly’s).</p>
<p>Finals are coming up in a minute. When most of the students are have taken up residence in Baker for days on end, I would be curious to know where he is eating.</p>
<p>Have you considered upgrading to the Big Green Plan (he will get a 10% discount on everything with the exception of Topside)?</p>
<p>I think the off-campus plan is probably required because they already know that students are going to eat on-campus, regardless of where they live and it is probably more administratively convienent as students swipe their IDs vs. swiping credit/debit cards or paying cash. There are few students who are actually going to leave campus and “go home” to grab something to eat and then come back to campus, where even living “close” is a nice little walk.</p>
<p>You can purchase larger dining packages if one wishes. You can use more than you purchased at the beginning of the semester as well. I think a larger plan gives you a small discount, but the dollars don’t carry over from the end of the year to the beginning of a new year. The dollars do carry over from term to term within the year. There isn’t much of a discount, and if you go over the dollars from the basic “green” dining plan, the student account is billed. </p>
<p>Dining off-campus is pretty pricey in the Hanover area, but there are other options besides Molly’s and Murphy’s. </p>
<p>Every kid is so different, but I would guess my son gets by on a lot less than $300/month and he has a very active social life, too.</p>
<p>This certainly is a timely topic for our family. My daughter (only 12) ran up a huge texting bill which she now must repay out of her allowance. (which is four dollars a week, including chores) She was pretty miffed with “Why can’t I have unlimited texting like the other kids?” but H and I think she’s lucky to have a cellphone at all let alone an expensive unlimited texting plan on top of it. She already has texting mins. built in but went over by 300 messages! Where’s the self control? I told her she didn’t have to text someone every time a thought came to her. Now that she has to pay she said she’s thinking before touching that dial…good thing.</p>
<p>Hmom: no, he works at Homeplate, which supposedly specializes in healthy foods (high fiber, low cholesterol, etc), cooked to order things, and local ingredients. Glancing at the menus, it looks at least as healthy–in fact, more so–than the kosher grill. Prices are not cited, though. The kosher grill would appear to be big on meat, which may be more to your S’s taste. :)</p>
<p>dke, this summer my S managed to kill the cell phone he got with his first plan by being doused with sea water. He had to buy himself a new one, and did so through Ebay. He was surprised to discover how much phones cost when they’re not accompanied by a new plan sign-up. His somewhat casual attitude–easy-come, easy-go is what I’ve accused him of in the past–towards many things seems to be changing now that HE has to pay for them! ;)</p>
<p>So true, Consolation. We’ve found that there’s much less “gimme gimme” when its coming out of their pockets. All of a sudden the “needs” become luxuries. How else are they going to learn some sort of self restraint when it comes to spending? Sometimes I look at my kids’ friends’ parents and wonder what they’re thinking. I think it gives them alot of pleasure to buy things that maybe they didn’t have when they were growing up, but IMHO they’re doing the kids a huge disservice. Shrink, YES its 20 cents every time she got a text message. I was having a FIT. Ramped up the minutes by a little bit and said “that’s it. You pay any overage on this.” We’ll see what the next bill looks like!</p>
<p>dke- Not to excuse your D’s texting but have you considered adding texting to your plan. If you have a family plan with ATT you can add unlimited texting to all the phones for a small amount. I think 20 or 30 dollars. All 3 of my kids text. My husband texts. I text on occasion. It is much easier to text my D that I will pick her up at a certain time or location. That way I don’t have to risk her phone ringing in class. The texting has also come in handy when she is in a uncomfortable speaking what she wants to say. For example we often get a text that says. Call me and say I need to come home or that I am not allowed a sleepover. Things she would not want to say in front of her friends. My older kids also text us when they fly and arrive at there destination.
I think money at college is a sensitive subject. We provide S with room, board, tuition and pay books and supplies. He has a scholarship that picks up some of those costs. We also bought him a laptop. If it needed to be replaced it would be on a case by case basis depending on why he needed a new one. Neglience would be on his dime. Freshman yr we gave him a small allowance about 40 a week. Often he didn’t use it. Due to LD and ADD we did not want him to work. He is frugal by nature. Last summer due to some unhappiness with his behavior we stressed that he needed to find a job to fund spending money for school. This semester he has used that money. I think he has gone through about 150 dollars. Some of that spent at the indian gaming casinos. He is lucky that his school is not in an area that they have much to spend money on. They eat out on occasion but mainly at a burrito place. The school has food available till at least 1 am I think this yr.
If he wanted to go snowboarding or something special we would consider helping out. All this depending on him doing the right thing. Studying, going to class, having some regular contact with us.
My oldest went to a school where the dining hall hours were short. She went through money quickly dining outside of campus. Many of her dormmates had cars and what seemed like an unlimited source of cash. She said her roommate rarely went to the cafeteria preferring to go off campus. For my D it made it hard. She had worked all through high school so had a large savings account that she used. She never felt she had enough money.
For your son I would sit down and work out a budget as to where his money is going. If I could afford the plane ticket for spring break I would give it as a gift. Letting him know that he needs to start cutting back on his spending and save up to fund the other costs of his trip.
I son did say that those who have more spending money often help out those who don’t have much. My son said that he declines an invitation someone will often offer to pay his portion.</p>
<p>I should add that my S is also very frugal by nature and that he has asked for almost nothing. But he does have a tendency to lose things–especially articles of clothing!–and adopt a casual attitude about things like losing his phone charger and ruining his phone. (It may be defensive. )</p>
<p>My D is a freshman, and we took a different approach to avoid having to constantly have to negotiate. We told her that we would pay her tuition, driving insurance (although not providing a car), and family phone plan (she pays the addition for unlimited texting). Then we provided the college savings account that we had for her to cover all else. We walked through the budget as to how that savings plan MIGHT make it through the four years if she were to live extremely frugally. But it is her problem to manage that savings plan for room/board/miscellaneous expenses. She started working in high school, so has some of her own money to contribute, and plans to work every summer and maybe during the school year starting next year. She is aware of every dollar she spends, and views it as the difference between graduating with some money to spare or graduating in debt. It is not our problem (our problem is to manage our own budget to come up with that tuition payment).</p>
<p>Kids text messaging a lot, they don’t even talk on the phone. I found this out the hard way and changed my family cell phone plan to include unlimited text message which is something like $10 for the whole family.</p>
<p>Oh gosh Consolation, just don’t ever give him a black Northface jacket! Have you seen all the humor surrounding scores of kids blitzing (I’m getting the hang of it) the whole campus after a big party weekend looking for their ubiquitous black Northface?</p>
<p>Hey!! my kid has sent one of those blitzes Went to a party and some one took her jacket. Went to another party and got her same jacket back. I asked her how did she know the infamous black Northface fleece was hers? She said her lipgloss and the Duane Reade receipt from when she purchased it while at home was still in the pocket :D</p>
<p>btw, she said the some of the food at the Pavillion was really good , kosher on one side, halal on the other (she loves their shawarma and pita )but it could be a bit pricy ($8) for an entre. Students who work for DDS get 20% off of their purchases. She said the crew who works from 5-8pm really earn their money because it is during these hours when most students go to dinner.</p>
<p>I’ll share a story re cell phone plans. I knew a family (not mine) where the father decided that x amount of minutes was sufficient. He and his wife were living across the world from their college daughter at the time. Every month she went over he minutes and it was a huge power struggle. He was adamant, she kept going over, in part because boyfriend lived in a later time zone. In the end, hundreds and hundreds of dollars of charges accrued (I thinks she paid them) because of his unwillingness to change the plan. He is a laconic man who simply could not understand why someone would need more minutes (this was before texting was so popular.) He was certain his plan was sufficient. I thought it was akin to parents who have huge power struggles with toddlers over touching breakable objects rather than moving them. I realized a few months back that he times were changing and added unlimited texting our family plan. If it’s the money, let some of it be a birthday/Christmas gift or let the kid pay for it – but the way cell phone plans work, it’s not worth risking a huge bill in my opinion – and they will get texted by others which does count on most plans.</p>
<p>You are being indulgent if a kid is demanding and ungrateful and you continue to reward it. That does not sound at all like it’s the case here. As my wealthy aunt used to say, “The kids aren’t spoiled, they just smell that way.” Oddly, this is one of the few benefits to having less money. My ds knows that our money is limited and so he doesn’t ask for much and it’s not hard to say no because we’re not saying it on principle, we’re saying it because we don’t have it to give. I actually let my ds take the summer off after hs graduation and before his freshman year. He had earned a huge scholarship and all we had to pay for was books. He had cash saved from the previous summer, and he had graduation money. I said if he felt he could make that cash last for his spending money freshman year then he could have the summer to play. Was this indulgent? Absolutely! Will he ever have that opportunity again? Absolutely not! My nieces and nephews from a very wealthy family all work two or three jobs in the summer and parents make them pay for their own books. They have definitely learned how to be hard workers, but as my son pointed out, they’re working really hard to buy all sorts of crap they don’t need.</p>
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