<p>My wife and I are entering discussion on this. He will be living on campus with a meal plan. My wife is the generous one I am not so geneous His current allowance is $65 a week from which he also pays for his gasoline. I say it should be the same for college since he won’t be spending $25 a week for gasoline. My wife says we should increase it to $75 a week because New York City is expensive.</p>
<p>How do you determine you childs allowance for college?</p>
<p>BTW, don’t bother with “they should work for it” sniping.</p>
<p>I will be VERY interested to hear discussion on this, especially from parents who have just been through their student’s first year at college and are now reflecting on the results.</p>
<p>My former-senior only gets $100 a month from us, including gas. I guess we’re a little cheap…?</p>
<p>That’s not being cheap. That’s about what I get from my parents… and this is -after- stepping it up from $10/week in high school.</p>
<p>I got $25/week in college and found it far more than sufficient - my CD collection doubled in size. I could easily go down to $5-10/week with no inconveniences.</p>
<p>BMoyilan, you’re certainly right that NYC is expensive! D2 who just finished her sophomore year figures that she averages $100/week during the course of the school year. Some weeks it’s more, some less but overall that’s about what she’s averaged spending per week. While you’re right that gas will no longer be an expense, public transportation will be, and even with a monthly pass, it’s not cheap.</p>
<p>As a freshman, my D got $150 per month (she was on a meal plan, in a dorm). This campus is in a large metro area close to downtown. However, she was so incredibly busy, she didn’t have much time to go and spend money. She didn’t have a car on campus but will for sophomore year. I haven’t decided whether I’ll change the amount to allow for gas or not.</p>
<p>Son will be on a campus in a city that is a little more of an urban area.
We will probably keep his $ about the same, at least for the 1st semester to see how it goes. He will also be doing some work study while D is not (no time). No cars allowed for freshmen.</p>
<p>I don’t really know if these amounts are stingy or generous so I’m looking forward to other parent responses to help gauge our contributions!</p>
<p>I have a son who is a college junior. We give him $150 per month. He goes to school in a fairly urban area outside an even larger city. Another consideration is that, since he is diabetic, we wanted him to have enough money for food when dorm cafeterias were closed. This year he is living in an apartment near campus. He has a car on campus this year but rarely uses it so spends little on gas. He has worked the last few summers in our hometown and in NYC (the latter for minimum wage); he uses this money for additional social expenses such as movies, concerts, DVDs. He is not into buying clothes so that has not become an issue. So far this has worked for us.</p>
<p>We started daughter off with $1K in the bank in rural Williamstown MA. She was able to buy a multi-area ski-pass, pay for entertainment, transportation home, etc. from that. She just finished sophomore year, and that again seemed to be a reasonable amount. No car yet.</p>
<p>nothing
we do give her money for her medical expenses when she tells us- like glasses etc.
Freshman year- we bought a lot of her books beforehand
a life saver as just one of her classes had 18 required books and her major biology also has expensive books.
We also took her shoping during orientation and bought the things she forgot or needed. The bookstore often has those things but if it is possible bedbath and beyond or Target have a lot more selection.
We opened up an account at the school bookstore. While she did pay for many of her books herself with her workstudy job, the bookstore account allowed her to purchase emergency items that she hadnt been able to get off campus ( she doesn’t have a car)
It probably averaged out to about $20 a month- however I recognize that she is frugal- and the main clothing shopping place at her school are the Goodwill bins- where clothing that they aren’t selling in the shop/too tired to sort anymore are dumped and is free.
Towns vary in expense- but Portland with its bohemian style and public transportation, is one of the less expensive places for a college students ( unless of course you start eating off campus in the Pearl district everynight)</p>
<p>Based on where your son is attending school I can’t say how much her would spend on campus, but the surrounding area is a nice little affluent area so he might spend a nice piece of change for a nice dinner off campus especially if he takes someone out.</p>
<p>But if he travels into NYC on the weekend, a round trip off peak ticket is about $10 round trip into the city (double the price if he forgets to purchase one before boarding the train). If in the city he goes to the movies, chalk up another $11. It could get a bit pricy, but that is something that they probably won’t be doing every week.<br>
gotta go with your wife on this one, even then he will probably end up saving for a big night out.</p>
<p>This is helpful, keep it coming! I was leaning toward $200/month for my daughter, at least through Christmas, but this would include clothes - she’s going from the Deep South to NH, so she’s going to need some expensive gear - shoes, coats - and the ski stores here have all counseled waiting until she gets there because of selection.</p>
<p>As an aside to this, does the sum include all clothes, and air travel home, if that is required? I was planning on booking her first couple of tickets myself, then turning travel arrangements over to her after we both have a better handle on what the logistics will be.</p>
<p>We paid tuition, room and board remaining after scholarships (mainly with loans!) Both boys got jobs (work/study) for anything else.</p>
<p>And this is the same arrangement we had when they lived at home. :)</p>
<p>BTW, this isn’t sniping. Please don’t read it that way. It’s just what we did. If there were needs, they asked. I don’t know that we ever said no, although we did define “need” differently sometimes. (An electric guitar and amp were defined differently by S#1 than by us. Despite his trying to convince us that an electric guitar was really called a “practice guitar” because it could be played silently and not bother roommates.)</p>
<p>Clothing needs, book money, etc. were all met by us. It wasn’t a set amount determined in advance. We had accounts in the same bank, so we could just transfer money as needed.</p>
<p>$200 a month is going to be a good for Hanover because everything on campus is pretty inexpensive. On Main street there is the GAP, Talbots, CVS, a north face store is coming and the rest of the stores are little boutiques (they can be very pricey). I am one for shoping off season, because the style is not going to change radically. </p>
<p>They wear northface jackets, and patagonia fleeces, and layers ,sweatshirts with flip-flops (go figure) as it gets colder. Hanover is one of the few places where people will still wear those ugly ugg boats because it is about being warm in the middle of winter. S says that the key is to pace your self because you know it is going to get colder so don’t pile on clothes the moment it gets cold.</p>
<p>D and friends go out to dinner every wednesday night at Mollys, even ordering takeout from EBA’s should run about $10. Books will run about $300- 400 per term depending on the course.</p>
<p>Depending on if she takes skiing in the winter to satisfy her gym requirement or just because she likes to ski, that will cost you a few hundred dollars.</p>
<p>If they go to Boston I thing Dartmouth coach is about $55 r/t.</p>
<p>Once you get the look at the calendar it would definitely be to your advantage if you booked the flights home because you would have th more time to comparison shop for flights.</p>
<p>I did pay the $20 for a student advantage card which she said she uses to get discounts. </p>
<p>We did $1700 for the year, which is exactly what she had paid by her campus job (we had that paid directly toward tuition). We put that in her account to spend as she would. In addition, we paid for one return flight, and the initial cost of setting up her room, and first coat and boots. She paid for everything else: books, clothes, travel, coffee, trip to DC and Boston, second trip home, concert tickets, etc. Came out about $100 ahead. We made it clear that if she ran out, we’d reseed, as we wanted to know how much it cost too.</p>
<p>There is no “right” amount, and it can be adjusted. Come to some agreement as to what is an average budget for the school. Perhaps that is a question you can ask them. I would insist on careful records being kept for expenses, and if it turns out that there is valid reason to “reseed” (I love the way you put that, Mini), you can do so. You can also discuss the expense of college and hopefully instill some thrift values so that the student tries to keep under the budget. Clearly, sometimes unexpected expenses come up–my brother once broke his glasses and absolutely needed immediate replacement–was not in the budget. Perhaps a great opportunity comes up at an expense not in the budget. But if too many opportunities coming up are deemed great, some discussion of lifestyle would be in order. By keeping a spending log, you are also teaching your student a valuable skill, especially if he is going to have to budget and be aware of costs in adulthood.</p>
<p>If he’s going to be in NYC without a car–and NO kid should have one in the City–he will need a Metrocard to get around. It’s currently $76 for a 30 day pass. I’d factor that in your expense estimates. If he needs to fly home and will be carrying a lot of stuff, add in about $70 in cabfare round trip to an airport, including tip, for each visit home–or at least each trip for which he has too much stuff to make the subway/train/bus a realistic choice. </p>
<p>Personally, I think $100 a week is generous, but not extravagant. $75 is sort of the lower end of realistic. NYC IS expensive and reality is that a lot of the socializing at NYU and Columbia takes place off-campus, which makes it expensive.</p>
<p>Obviously, there is no “one size fits all” answer to this. But, remember that a movie in NYC will be $10.50, with soda and popcorn about $20. Toiletries are also very expensive and taxed to the tune of 8 1/4%. Shampoo, deodorant, shaving cream, toothpaste, etc., really add up fast here. I don’t know where you live–if you are driving him, haul a lot of this with you. If he’s flying, he’ll have to buy it here. </p>
<p>Also, does your cell phone plan cover NYC okay? If he doesn’t have a cell phone now, add that in too.</p>
<p>We’re in the nothing category also. Daughter is expected to make $1000 a summer to have to pay for entertainment, meals out, incidental expenses (which for her is on-line clothes shopping - she discovered e-bay this year - literally the only place in her college town to shop is Walmart). She has a credit card attached to ours that she uses for books, prescriptions and emergencies (e.g. car troubles). She has her own 1st Financial Bank credit card with a limit of $250 that she uses strictly for gas and which we pay (but that is less than $30 a month - there’s no place to go and she drives a very gas thrifty car). We pay tuition, room and board and car insurance. For big clothing purchases, she comes home or we meet in-between and I oversee purchases with my credit card. In reality, she doesn’t need a lot of $$ but somehow managed to spent her $1000 by April. I wound up “reseeding” (also love that term!) her $100 to make it through to finals.</p>
<p>She’s a spendthrift - whatever we gave her would be the amount she would spend. We think it’s better to let her think she has to cough up the initial start-up fund but, in reality, we would probably rescue her. We’re weak…</p>
His current allowance is $65 a week from which he also pays for his gasoline. I say it should be the same for college since he won’t be spending $25 a week for gasoline. My wife says we should increase it to $75 a week because New York City is expensive.</p>