I agree with the posts above that say grad students should be independent of parents for the most part and I definitely believe living like a poor graduate student isn’t a bad thing. My son is living his dream. He was accepted as a MS/PhD student to a top program in his field and he’s thrilled that the university is in a very desirable location, so being poor is not so bad. Unfortunately, the prime location comes with an extraordinary high cost of living. The high cost isn’t just for housing but groceries, utilities (especially water), restaurants, gas - everything. The city doesn’t even have a Walmart or Target and he’s been told it’s because the land prices are too high for them to come in. He will be getting the standard stipend of $24k, but this year he is on fellowship and he gets an additional $5k. He went straight from undergrad to grad, so he had pretty much exhausted the savings he had as an undergrad, so he didn’t have an emergency fund. He worked this summer, but nearly all of his pay went to buy a computer and a bike.
Here’s how we helped out: We helped him figure out his budget and convinced him to live off the future stipend amount this year and use the excess fellowship money for an emergency fund. He gets medical coverage, but we also kept him on our insurance because we could. I honestly don’t know how that would work if there were a major medical expense. We also paid his first month of rent and gave him $400 to set up his new place. We pay for his phone service and we paid for his renter’s insurance. We will pay for plane tickets home. We are also going to fund the initial investment required for a Roth IRA that he can then add to. Other than that, we decided to give him $100 per month. It’s nothing to us, but it’s huge for him. It gives him a cushion - it’s a week worth of groceries, several meals out, a pair of shoes or money for an unexpected expense. We pledged all of the above for his first year; we’ll look at it again at the beginning of next year.
Here is the budget form we found helpful - you will need to add a section for taxes. Fellowships are not taxable income, but stipends are. Typically, taxes aren’t withheld so students may need to pay quarterly estimates.
http://www.iconcreditunion.org/app/uploads/2014/12/Accel-College_StuBudget.pdf
Best cost savers for him … He has a roommate, he has a bike instead of a car, and he gave up golf and replaced it with surfing, running and biking. He and his roommate share meals and whoever cooks makes enough for lunches the next day. Bottom line, we have learned he can live on $24k per year and because he loves what he’s doing and where he’s living and he enjoys his cohort, he really doesn’t feel poor.