<p>I have a senior in college, and his money management has a lot left to be desired. He works hard all summer to have expense money for the school year, which is great. Unfortunately now that he is in a frat, lives off campus, and has his car, he is spending way more money than the first couple of years. I budget his money and give it to him monthly, but he always needs an advance. He wants to be in control of all of his money, and says he earned it, and I shouldn’t keep it from him. I’m afraid that if I give him his money, he will go broke, and then need it from us! Only one more semester…advise?</p>
<p>IS it his money? Or is it your money? Big difference. I make the terms about money that comes from my pocket/ account. I just might not be able to swing an advance, or not want to pay out a lump sum. That’s my perogative. If it’s his money, and he is an adult, he has a right to it. </p>
<p>Make it clear to him how you feel about his spending. But don’t make threats that you may have to eat. Sometimes, parents make things so dire, that these young foolish adults end up in more trouble by not letting parents know about situation, wanting to avoid parental anger.</p>
<p>We were VERY clear with our kids. They had to earn all discretionary money. If they ran out, we would NOT supplement their discretionary spending.</p>
<p>If necessary, we would have given gift cards to the grocery store…but that’s it.</p>
<p>One month without spending money, and my guess is your son will keep in a budget. If he runs out of money for discretionary things…why would you view this as YOUR problem?</p>
<p>If he can’t afford a car…bring the car home. If he can’t afford,to,eat out, go to,concerts, buy new clothes, etc…that is his problem.</p>
<p>Make sure he has food money. Then let the chips fall.</p>
<p>Actually as a college senior, I would put HIM in charge of budgeting his own money. How will he learn to do this if you do it for him? I would give him HIS money. Make it clear what that is supposed to,cover…make it very clear. Then don’t bend.</p>
<p>Good grief, you are doling out an allowance to a 22 year old? No wonder he does not have the skills he needs. Cut the cord already and let him be responsible for his own success or failure. If not now then when?!</p>
<p>At a lot of colleges, the upper classmen who spent their food allowances before the year end are often begging meals off freshmen whose cards are flush with the cafeteria credits AND are getting allowances from parents so concerned that first year that their darlings are well fed. It’s a rite of passage, i think.</p>
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He’s right - it’s his money and he should be in control of it and decide how to spend it as he wishes. ‘He’ should be doing the budgeting of his money. </p>
<p>The way you’re doing it now obviously isn’t successful since he’s going over budget all the time - something that is almost certain to happen when one isn’t in control and doesn’t see the full picture. It also happens when one doesn’t really have to live within their budget ceiling and therefore just keeps spending more and more (sound familiar?).</p>
<p>Just let him take control and if he runs out of money let him live with the consequences of no gas for the car, no restaurant money, no alcohol money, no other entertainment money. This is the quickest way for him to get the budget under control.</p>
<p>If it’s his money, he’s 21/22 years old- let him have full control over it unless there’s a mental condition that affects his decisions making (being a stupid frat bro doesn’t qualify). Be very clear that you’re not giving him money if he blows through his and stick to that. He’ll figure it out. It’s human nature not to let yourself starve.</p>
<p>@almostgrad - I think you need to let him have control of his money and he might actually surprise you (or maybe not LOL). My oldest (also a senior in college) is not very good at managing her money. She is in a sorority (and the dues are expensive in my opinion) and we pay her tuition, room and board and she pays everything else (books were a new requirement for her this year because we have two kids in college and my husband is out of work). </p>
<p>This is also the first year she’s taken a car to school and she has to pay for the gas and maintenance. That was part of the deal if she took the car. Hopefully it isn’t sitting on the side of the road, abandoned, out of gas.</p>
<p>She has saved enough money over the summers to pay her sorority dues each year and have some spending money for the year. In addition, she has to work during the school year (just a few hours a week up until this year and now she’s working about 15-20 hours) in order to get more spending money.</p>
<p>The first year she called me toward the end of the first quarter and said she needed more money on her meal plan and I told her I would give her $50 this time but she needed to learn to budget her meal money better (not go to local restaurants when she can go to the cafeteria, etc.). I let her know that if she didn’t budget in the future, she would have to pay for her own meals after she ran out of food. Yes, it’s harsh, but if I continued to bail her out she would never learn to budget her money. I think she has finally learned to budget her money and she saved most of her summer income this year which is a first for her. Last summer she bought a TV and and XBox with her first two checks :(.</p>
<p>For goodness sakes - he’s almost 25 and you’re treating him as if he were five! If this is money that he earned, then he should have control over it. If he spends it all and ends up broke, that’s his problem, not yours . . . unless, of course, you’re planning to enable him by covering his expenses once his account runs dry. When he runs out, he can get a job.</p>
<p>Yes, it looks like he needs to learn to control his spending . . . but if you’re going to bail him out whenever he runs out of cash, it looks like you need to learn some self-control as well!</p>
<p>I would sit down with your son and help him make a budget reflecting his current financial situation. Sometimes when all of a sudden they are in an apartment, and in a fraternity, etc., they lose their place because it is not just a bit of spending money on top of a meal plan.</p>
<p>Show him the amount of money he has left. Divide by the number of months he must get through on that amount. List his set monthly expenses, plus a reasonable amount for food or whatever else is a necessary but sometimes variable expense. Show him what “discretionary” money there is left.</p>
<p>You might want to mention picking up a part time job if he does not already have one.</p>
<p>Let this be a teachable moment for him. Before you know it he will be out of school, hopefully employed, and having to learn to live on his own on a set amount of money.</p>
<p>If this is discretionary funds he has earned they should be accessible to him. When was he going to learn to manage his money? Give him the funds, help him set a reasonable budget. I think transfers from their own saving to checking makes a difference. It’s one thing to ask for an advance from the bank of mom & dad, quite another when you’re moving your own money from one pocket to another. He may have to skin his knees. Better now then next year.</p>
<p>Let him go broke. He can get a job if he needs more money.</p>
<p>Just make sure when you give him the money that you explain in detail that if he runs out of money.
1.) You aren’t going to bail him out.
2.) He should not resort to getting a credit card to tide himself over. Instead he would need to find a part time job. College kids who get credit cards can end up spending way too much and end up in the hole very quickly.</p>
<p>This thread reminds me of how my son learned to manage money–but in his case, he was 13. He received a lot of cash for his Bar Mitzvah. We put most of it away, but gave him a chunk to do with as he pleased, then sat back to see what would happen. What happened was that he bought every Star Wars figurine on the market–spent it all. It only took a few months for him to deeply regret that decision, and I think all these years later it still smarts, because when he visits, he sees all those figurines that are still sitting on his bookshelves. (And no, they aren’t worth anything.) I say hand the money over to your son with the explicit understanding that regardless of past practice, you won’t be supplementing it. I don’t think any college senior has ever starved to death–he won’t either. And as he sees the balance dwindle, he’ll likely develop some good money management skills.</p>
<p>So if I understand correctly:</p>
<p>Your son has worked for this money.</p>
<p>And you, for some reason, are controlling it and disbursing it to him on some kind of schedule.</p>
<p>He resents this and is always asking for an advance.</p>
<p>My question is: Why are you controlling HIS MONEY?</p>
<p>Give it to him, and tell him it is up to him to manage it. Make it clear that you will NOT give him additional money to make up for irresponsible spending.</p>
<p>At what point do we allow our adult children to be adults and suffer the consequences of adult choices?!</p>
<p>He’s a college senior and you’re still controlling his budget? </p>
<p>I had complete control over my budget from money earned from summer/part-time jobs…and the responsibility to pay for what my college’s near-full ride scholarship/FA package since I was a 17 year old freshman. </p>
<p>My parents weren’t in a position to provide any financial assistance…and consequently, had no say in my budgets during my undergrad years and after. While I did make some mistakes, I never ran short to the point of needing a bailout…because I knew my parents were in no position to do so and I’d feel too ashamed to admit to screwing up like that. </p>
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<p>Closest thing to that at my LAC are some classmates whose student-run dining CO-OPs ran out of food late in the semester due to poor planning or much more common, a long running student-driven tradition of sneaking in local homeless or indigent folks so they could have a decent warm meal or few.</p>
<p>Give him control over his money, and then don’t give him one more red cent. Sounds like he needs to learn that he’s living beyond his means.</p>
<p>lol…I’m curious how the mom got ahold of HIS money in the first place??? That’s just weird.</p>
<p>anyway…I would encourage my son to “prepay” as much as he can with his money…pay all his frat dues now, etc. Then he’ll see what he has leftover. </p>
<p>My son prepaid a whole year’s rent so that he’d be sure to have that covered (that includes his utilities). That gave him a clearer picture of what he had left to spend each month on food, gas, etc. </p>
<p>Once he figures out how much he has “leftover”, have him divide that into “weeks”. This will give him an idea of how much he can spend each week. </p>
<p>One thing that I found when I did financial planning was that a number of bright people with good math skills do NOT ever really “do the math” when it comes to money. Strange. I’ve seen people with extensive math backgrounds who are in such denial about money. </p>
<p>make sure that your son TRULY KNOWS that you will NOT bail him out if he runs out of money. Make sure he knows that this is not some idle threat.</p>
<p>Senior year with graduation on the horizon? I think mom and dad would be hard put not to bail him out. As painful as this may be for the parent, if that is the students’ money, he has a right to it unless some sort of deal was made about parents paying only if they can dole out the living expenses on schedule. Nothing wrong with the arrangement as a freshman but by the time a student is a senior, the weaning process should have been about complete. But it isn’t and going cold turkey might be tough on everyone. '</p>
<p>I think prepaying the fixed costs like rent would be a good idea. College students can forage food, and the car just isn’t going to be going anywhere without gas money. But setting aside something for books and living expenses would probably be a good idea since it appears this young man has never had to manage his money as it’s been doled out to him.</p>
<p>My kids were good with their money in college, but had and have a lot of trouble after they were out. They did a lot better with a tight budget. I also suspect they were subsidized by others in a lot of their expenses at school, and now have to bear the brunt of them. </p>
<p>At this point, the kid is a man, an adult, and I think it’s time he got his hands on his own money and learned to budget, spend it with fixed costs paid out of it. I’d have been more reluctant to give my kids a car at college than their money if I had qualms about their management. A car can really eat up the expenses and can cause a lot of trouble and liability.</p>
<p>If that’s his money, mom probably insisted on taking it as a condition of paying for his college tution and other costs. I sort of did this, not as a condition or insisting, for freshman year, but it was a very loose situation and it was to ease the student into learning to manage money. The next year, they got full access to their own funds, and I wasn’t really holding the pursestrings even the first year, just helping and like I said, the kids were all on board with the system and even welcomed it. </p>
<p>So I don’t know what the best thing to do is, but I think there is something not right with a 21-22 still being doled out his own money if that is the case. The transition that should have occurred did not.</p>
<p>Doesn’t your son have a bank account he puts his earnings in so he can access it through the school year? Giving you his checks to manage doesn’t seem right, especially for a senior. You need to give him some financial control.</p>