Please don’t take my comments in post 35 as meaning I think it is wrong to give your kids a gift of money here and there, when they come to visit, for holidays, birthdays, etc. etc. but when it takes the place of a regular allowance or budget because it does take place regularly and seems to be counted on but is done in an inconsistent way based on whim/mood, I don’t feel that is productive nor helpful to developing fiscal responsibility in a young adult.
@ MichiganGeorgia GREAT POINT! prob reason why I am in this predicament…doing tooooo much for the kiddies
BUT I AM REPENTING NOW:)
HALALUYA!!
Sit down and draw up a budget with her. What will she pay for rent, utilities, insurance, gas, public transportation, food, entertainment, etc. From there you can have a sense what’s up and then if you and your wife can decide to supplement you are at least doing it knowing what you’re “buying,”
It’s true–I never had a “budget” in my life, yet I managed to get myself through college and law schools with full merit and F Aid.
I admit my folks did buy me plane tickets to see them every summer and one every winter to see my sister. Other than that, I was on my own and never asked for more money from my folks. I got my own rentals and other housing and always managed to live below my means.
We were very clear with our kids right from the start of college. We paid for NO discretionary spending. No spring break trips. No pizza. No dinners out. No shopping trips. We also expected them to pay for books.
We paid tuition, room, board, fees, and transportation home for breaks. We kept the kids on our cell phone plan.
If they ran out of money because they over spent…we would not have covered the shortfall, both had jobs in college. They just had to earn the money they spent.
Our kids also couldn’t over use credit cards, because their student card had a $500 limit…period.
How do you stop? Just say no.
Has anyone else dealt with this? Only heard from one so far…
@Hlmom I have never had a spending budget, BUT always a saving budget…
My mom never cut me off, but I was always good about not asking for too much.
I didn’t hold a job at all as my mom wanted me to focus on studying and not hold a job like I did in hs.
I had a serving job that took too much time out of studying and we decided we could budget out living expenses and put it elsewhere so that we could do without me having a job.
No reason to stop buying things for them and helping them out, just make sure they understand how much you have to spend, and what you are able to provide. DO NOT GIVE HER MONEY FOR THE SPRING BREAK TRIP.
That is bratty and obnoxious, just give her money to help out with little things here and there.
@MichiganGeorgia see post #37
Ours weaned themselves off us, although we told them starting about junior year in high school that the buck stopped the day we made their last tuition payment. We never gave allowances or gave them money, they had to ask for it (or earn it) so they never felt like it was ‘free’ money.
OP,
Do a search on cc for allowance. This is a topic that has come up a lot. For you, the time to put the brakes on is NOW, as you know. Please do not teach her that drama gets her what she wants. You as a parent have the great opportunity to teach her financial management. We drew up a budgets with our s’s when they lived off campus and gave them a monthly allowance by rains ferrying it from our savings to theirs. That way we could also see when thy took it out, and how much they took (they didn’t just move the lump sum to their checking all at once, fortunately). When one started to take too much in a shorter period of time, we had a little conversation. We also had him track his spending. We used an app, IIRC, but will have to find the name (it’s a pretty well known one), and he learned better financial management. Put your fingers in your ears when she howls and whines, and let her know you will be sticking to the budget you both agreed to. Good luck!
When S asked for money in college, I asked him to prepare a budget–how much money was received and where it was being spent and what the shortfall was and how it was proposed to be spent. He brought the topic up twice and I gave him the same answer each time.
He never did present me with a budget and decided it was easier and better for him just to get a campus job and make and spend his money as he chose.
By the way, I was perfectly ready and willing to see and hear his budget presentation but I didn’t want him to consider us an ATM. I was happy with his choice to get a campus job in his field.
I must not be a good parent here: I have never taught our “kid” to budget. We really do not distinquish his money and our money. (We do not budget either.) But somehow all of us are relatively frugal. Maybe it is because none of us think we have a lot of money. We rarely took vacations (maybe once every 7-8 years?) For example, I think when he was in college, none of us took any vacation. Whatever money we had was used for him to fly to campus and fly home. When we spend money on him, we feel “satisfied”; when he spend money on himself, I think he might feel “guilty” or at least “uncomfortable.”
I think it is often the case that it is more difficult for him to use money on his need/want than for us to use money on his need/want.
This situation should be changed when he makes his own money eventually, I guess.
I do not know gents. This seems to be a good kid who managed to earn 8.5K as a sophomore and have a future 60K job offer as a junior. She is young once. Another year and a half and she will probably be stuck in a cubicle with 10 vacation days and will pay all her expenses herself. Let her enjoy the rest of her “childhood” in comfort if you can afford it. I understand that you want to teach her financial responsibility but still…
What I noticed with my kids - they have no problem spending my money but when they have to spend money they earned - they suddenly become very frugal so this budgeting issue may self-correct when she is on her own.
“What I noticed with my kids - they have no problem spending my money but when they have to spend money they earned - they suddenly become very frugal so this budgeting issue may self-correct when she is on her own.”
Totally agree here. That’s why the job is so important. Sounds like OPs kid is reading the tea leaves too - knowing they can only squeeze a bit more cash out of ma and pa before the gravy train (and real life) are here. Sounds like a good kid - I’d buy her a haircut, but no nail salon visits for the trip!
Our kids would get a set amount every time we went on a trip with them that they could spend as they chose $5 or $10/day. They and we realized they were MUCH more careful about how they spent it and when they went to gift shops or wanted snacks and we smiked and said they had their own funds, they would really ponder it and learned to set priorities. Even back then, S was great about saving and deferring gratification. It really ended any and all whining. They had their money and when it was gone, that was it. Thus started when they were first able to understand the idea of money and very useful throughout their childhood.
I am unfamiliar with sophomores in college making and blowing $8500 in a year. I think they should understand once it’s gone, it’s gone. It’s not true that working people don’t get vacations. Our S gets a considerable amount of vacation from his first year of work.
Tough love is better sooner than later.
phunt01810, I am not in the same situation as my approach was more like Old Fort’s in which I gave my kids a set allowance and they needed to live within their means. Having said that, I would buy them things on occasion and the allowance was meant to help them learn to budget but was fairly generous. It stopped/stops the month they graduate(d). For me, the arrangement you have would be too challenging for me: when to say yes, when to say no, etc. Too subjective. I have 3 kids so I would worry about some level of equity between the kids.
Thus, my advice to you at this point would be to sit down with your daughter and help her determine what her expenses are and, assuming it’s not a financial hardship and it’s ‘your pleasure’, I would consider setting a monthly amount (or per semester) I’d give my daughter based on her needs (possibly less her income from her current job). Again, if it works for you economically and aligns with your wishes, I would make it clear that this is the amount she’ll receive until she graduates (starts her job?). Thus, she’ll start to learn how to budget her own money, you’ll know how much to expect to spend on her each month and you’ll be out of the business of needing to say yes or no when she asks. It also addresses the issue of how to wean her from your wallet (at least by graduation time).
An alternative is to decide that your daughter’s income from her job is now (or, maybe give a few months’ notice of the change) her source of disposable income. $8500 a year would be (way) more than a student would need for disposable income. Our kids put the money they made during their college years into the bank but that was just the approach that worked for our family. Each family is different.
If the parent’s good about not having one due to not having enough income to have much of one in the first place, that’s one way to avoid having such a problem as my parents found.
Post-college, the only thing I had to end up paying on that list was rent which was quite reasonable considering the area and amount of space we had.
Furniture, dishes, garbage containers…managed to get all that free from old roommates who moved out or from local undergrads who decided to abandon such items. Could have picked up a bunch of nice practically brand new dorm fridges if we had the space and roommates weren’t so wary of the extra hit to our utility bills*.
Even picked up some free serviceable/newish computers which were still usable this way from which I managed to get some bucks selling used or giving them away to disadvantaged kids/families I knew of.
As for cable TV…none of my roommates or yours truly was interested due to cost and the fact none of us were inclined to be home enough for it to be worth the cost. On the rare occasions my friends and I did watch cable TV, there were plenty of friends’ houses or dorm lounges where cable TV was easily accessible.
- Lived several years in that post-college apartment without A/C for the same reason. And this was a top floor apartment which retained so much heat that it tended to be 20 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than outside temperatures. Made for very hot apartment from late springs till early fall.
My 16yo D still in HS gets an allowance every week and 2X a year for clothing. That is it. She needs to budget her money for concerts, special clothing, dining out, etc. When I set up the allowance, I tried to calculate an amount of money that would cover her normal spending needs with a little extra. Now she does not look to me for money every time she is going out with friends, etc. I know she has some weeks where she is the “poor girl” and cannot grab lunch outside of school with friends because she choose to spend her money on other things. I think that is a good thing, she made a choice and needs to live with it. It was hard at first though to not slip her some extra money so she didn’t miss out. She worked last summer and saved most of the money. I expect she will do the same this summer. Budgeting is a valuable tool for our kids to learn.
Whatever you do, please remember that there may be substantial transition expenses at the end of college. Here I’m thinking about an apartment-hunting trip, moving expenses and/or the purchase of basic furniture (one or the other depending on whether the kid already owns some furniture), first and last month’s rent on an apartment, business wardrobe, possibly a car if the student doesn’t have one but will need one in the new place she will be living, and possibly money to live on for a month or two or three if the kid’s after-college job doesn’t start the moment she graduates.
Whatever you decide and however you change things now, remember that this is coming, and you probably don’t want your kid to have to turn down a new job because the kid doesn’t have the money to pay for an apartment deposit or a week’s supply of business casual clothing.
Yes, it would be a good thing if the kid could be responsible for these expenses herself. But if you wanted to require that, you would have had to establish that requirement several years ago to give her time to earn the money. It’s too late now.
What I’m suggesting here is that when you set conditions to modify your financial relationship with your daughter, keep this in mind. If you put her on a tight budget and say “there will be absolutely no more money coming except what we just talked about” but then renege on it because she needs transition money, you would be sending mixed messages.