My daughter will be graduating this year and hopes to be able to make enough money to cover all of her living expenses. I know a number of parents who tell me their kids can’t cover all their living costs on their entry level salary. So what costs do you still cover for your “grown-up” gainfully employed college graduate child:
room and board (they live at home with you still)
rent
medical/dental insurance (still on your plan or your pay for their plan?)
medical/dental expenses
cell phone plan (still on your plan or your pay for their plan?)
car insurance (still on your plan or your pay for their plan?)
car payments
emergency expenses (when these come up)
spending money (travel, entertainment?)
Depends on ability of parents, what is needed and shortfall, as well as what options are possible. Entry level salaries vary greatly, as do expenses, especially if there are loan repayments or other debt.
I pay nothing for S–he has a nice job that exceeds his expenses. I pay 100% for D–she is still challenged with chronic health issues, which we have to resolve before she can get a job.
You’ve asked what expenses we parents still cover for our college graduates. As HImom says, I’m sure it varies tremendously based on a variety of factors. For D1, who works for the government (not highly compensated and not benefitted), she remains on our family cell phone plan and is covered under dh’s employer-based health plan. These expenses are quite minimal as we still have one in college so would be paying for the ‘family’ health plan even if D1 were covered elsewhere. D2 is an engineer with a very nice salary and we don’t pay for anything. She offered to pull out of our family phone plan but then found out she could get a 20% discount with Verizon so she added it to our plan and stayed on; the discount pretty much covers her share.
From a philosophical standpoint, while of course we want our kids to stand on their own, and certainly wouldn’t support ‘enabling’ behavior, I’m sure we would provide more support if they were doing all we believe they could be to find a job/support themselves but needed assistance for an interim period.
Although it is not the same situation for DS (because he has still been a grad student whose main stream of “income” is from his loans), we paid the following for sure:
His cell phone bill
His car (which used to be our car and we gave it to him) and his auto insurance.
It is not easy to say who pays the other bills in OP’s list. This is because we really do not distinguish his money from our money. But since he borrows a lot of student loans every year, I think he has paid most of other bills. We only “help” on the side a little bit here and there when we still can, so that his total loan amount would not exceed a certain amount that will likely be “manageable” for him in the future.
We actually noticed the other day that his indebtedness due to his student loans is about the same as our indebtedness due to the remaining balance of our mortgage after having paid the mortgage for many years - since his early middle school, I think (We refinanced it a few times but have never had a cash-out refinance. We regret today that we did not always insist on the 15-year term instead of the 30-year term. We have switched back and forth between these two a few times.)
However, here is the big difference: He will have to pay off his student loans eventually no matter what, but we may ultimately choose to sell the house and use a part of the proceeds to pay off the remaining mortgage. In other word, in terms of net assets, he is under water but we are above water. So his overall financial picture as of today is definitely worse than ours.
Cell phone.
Car insurance and major repairs.
Medical insurance.
Dental care because no longer eligible for family dental insurance coverage.
Discounted rental rate (along with two roomies) at our house because we don’t want to have to deal with regular tenants and we plan to move back to that area within the next five years.
Yup we are paying too much, and need to work on getting the kid closer to romani’s standard of independence.
Daughter - gainfully employed - taking graduate level classes toward her Master Degree - lived at home for two years after college. We paid graduate school expenses (except for books) and she lived at home for free. She paid her insurance expenses (car and medical) and for her cell phone - along with everything else. We extend the free room and board offer for one year after college or if working toward a graduate degree. Daughter took us up on the offer - pocketed her salary - and ended up in a good place financially at the end of two years.
I’m a happy mom of two college graduates as of December (and one sophomore in college.) When my oldest graduated in May 2014, my husband and I told him that if he got a job within commuting distance that he was welcome to stay in the house (both of us lived with our parents in our 20s so this didn’t seem odd to us). He found something within an hour commute at a decent starting salary and lives here rent free (if he was a spendthrift we would charge rent, and save it for his future.) He pays all his other expenses (most of his food, car, car insurance, phone etc.) except for his medical and dental insurance. We are keeping him on ours since he has a chronic medical condition and probably will change jobs in the next year. He is saving quite a bit and will have a nice egg nest when he leaves in a year or two. 2nd son graduated this December. We too offered him the opportunity to live at home BUT he got a great job in another state at a great salary. After helping him move in January to start the job (and paying for some of the moving expense and a small downpayment on his new car) we plan to pay for nothing for him. He is/will be self-sufficient from now on unless something happens down the road. He is lucky enough that even living in a high cost area he SHOULD be able to save some for his future too.
What living costs? Living costs to provide the standard of what the parents’ supplied at home?
Are you serious??? I wouldn’t have an issue w treating grown children to join us for dinner or on our vacation. But do I take “travel & entertainment” to mean an allowance for grown up working offspring to go out and travel w their friends on our dime?
My D1 was on my cell phone plan, but made the rest work in her own. She had a job with benefits. Shared an apartment with a couple other roommates. Lives in a city with good public transit and does not own a car (this is a big savings). She walks a lot, too. I pay some vacation expenses – if she wants to join us for a trip, she covers airfare and I cover the rest of the expenses.
D2 will probably be in a PhD program, and will have a pretty low stipend. I may help her with health and dental insurance (no family plan, so hers is paid separately now), and maybe some plane tickets (because I want to see her!). She can live at home if she wants to and is in my city (low odds, but fingers are crossed!) while in grad school for minimal rent. If she is at least in my city but not living here, I will take her out and maybe drop off food occasionally. I will try to give gift cards for holidays that help out (Trader Joe’s, coffee shops, IKEA, etc), and send the occasional Harry & David’s fruit box (which I do now when she is on campus without food service).
Typical friends, no. However, if it is for a potential future DIL, our hearts have a soft spot about it. LOL. (Our family rarely take vacations though.) A somewhat interesting (ironic) family dynamic happens here: We bought a graduation gift (not particularly cheap in OUR standard) for his GF but it is likely we will not buy such a gift for him!
We pay son’s car insurance, cell phone and he is still on our medical insurance - even though he could get it through his employer. He takes the money saved from ins and puts it in company 401k. He also has our gas card but on,y uses it when he fills up after visiting us. He makes a nice salary and could afford all those expenses, but he is our only kid and we can afford it. Plus, it’s peanuts compared to the tuition we paid.
We did, however, have to pay a lot of money to get him settled in city where his job is. Summer sublet, perm apt (1st, last months rent and sec. dep,) finders fee, car stuff to pass new states inspection, etc, all in the space of two weeks. Wasnt expecting to have to fork over $8k! We thought about asking him to pay us back for the rent on perm apt but decided to not bother and it allowed him to start an emergency fund with the money he was saving.
I’ve been telling my son for years that I will cover…
Cell phone until he's 22 (technically 22 and 2 months, so that it doesn't kick in before he's graduated)
Rent free lodging at home until he's 24
Health insurance until he's 26
Everything else is his responsibility.
Also, since I’ve been saving for years for his college, I am planning to continue the pace through spring of his senior year (even though the final payment will be in December), and together with the final year AOTC, I will have a small amount of setting up money (about $8K) that will be available to him if he a) moves to another city to b) take a full-time job in his field. If he doesn’t meet those conditions for accessing it, it will go into my retirement.
We still pay for cell phones since it’s silly to disentangle them, the way the plans are set up.
They pay their own rent, utilities, food, etc but if they come home, we stock up on things they can take with them. They’re totally welcome to any toiletries from our home (please, take them!). My D is in the city and it’s inconvenient for her to access gluten-free bread so I buy gf foods at our local gf specialty store and give them to her.
We pay all costs to travel home (plane, train, bus fare and gas for auto), cell phone bills, and gift cards/set up expenses for some apartment items. We also stock up on food/toiletries and let them take what they wish - often not as much as we stock for them. ; ) We have an Amazon account they have access to - and they will occasionally order items from Amazon Pantry. I never question them - bulk peanut butter etc. S1 is a grad student but is quite frugal with a $, and S2 has a gov’t job with a decent salary and vg benefits. I tell them they are fortunate to have landed where they did - both have HS, and in S1’s case college friends without steady, career oriented employment.