In our town homeowners have to pay for their curbside trash pickup. With both children out of the house most of the year we cut our trash service to pickup once a week instead of twice a week.
I imagine there will be some entertainment savings as well. Movies/Shows/Ballgames.
@Barbalot By ‘dining hall’ do you mean at college? Or does your daughter eat at a dining hall at her HS? As ClaremontMom mentioned, I was only thinking cost savings, not college costs. I hope you see some savings in your food costs!
Mine haven’t left for college yet, but I’m looking forward to not having to find camps to keep them occupied during school breaks and summers. That’s got to be a $5K right there, per kid, and I’ve got two. Of course, summer vacations for two are going to be a lot cheaper than vacations for four (souvenirs, activities fees, food, lodging…etc).
I was expecting to pay for clothes, personal grooming (haircuts mostly) while they are in college. Do most people cut that out?
Dates, cars and other entertainment should totally be their responsibility, though.
Oh yes! Should have included that in general with my eating out…any entertainment is cheaper!
You’ll get lots of different answers on that one…we pay for our kids on everything except entertainment. (But we do ask they contribute some of their income to tuition)…There is a thread somewhere on this within the last year, but I can’t remember what it was (I’m sure there are actually many if you search).
Edit: Found it!: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1798852-are-you-all-giving-your-kid-an-allowance-for-college-if-so-how-much-p1.html
We’re planning on massively downsizing the house when younger DD (15, sophomore) goes to college.
I imagine all the collateral issues associated with a big house footprint will go down, there.
I don’t expect to cut out hair/grooming/clothing expenses-right now the girls tend to group those over winter/spring/summer break anyway because they’re so busy. I’m assuming that won’t change when they’re at college.
We have to carry comprehensive/collision on their car for them to be able to park at the HS. I’m assuming when younger DD goes to college we’ll be able to switch to basic liability and just leave that car in the driveway for most of the year, or even just rent a car for the month that they are home.
This a funny topic. I don’t think most people paying $60,000+ in college tuition and fees are feeling like they are suddenly saving money in the college years. In fact, I pay more in travel (airplane tickets during breaks), than I would ever save in food and utilities. And I still pay for my D’s auto insurance, cell phone, clothing etc. while she’s away at school. I think I should take notes from people on this thread, as they seem to have found a way to set their children’s expectations that the gravy train ends when they go off to college.
@spayurpets - As stated before, this isn’t about net savings…just little things that went down. Overall costs have definitely gone up!
None. My wife still cooks as if we have all our kids home.
@spayurpets I’m not saying you will ‘save’ money overall. But I did the due diligence to estimate expenses and calculate a COA for my kid when she goes to school. This is the other end of that. Where will I save? For example, I included ‘Travel Expenses’ (e.g., airfare) in my COA number when I was figuring out what I could afford. If you don’t save on insurance, then you don’t. Families will differ in amount and types of ‘savings’.
Plus, people spending $60K+ probably don’t care about what I’m talking about. Small peanuts. To me, its fairly significant.
For S1, we saved about $10k/year in travel baseball expenses. The bonus is I get to choose vacations instead of spending long days at ballparks. Other than baseball and maybe $1k/yr extra in food, he was a pretty cheap kid.
^ Boom! @Magnetron that’s huge!
Understood, I just found it funny (haha) that people can still retain this perspective; it’s like inventorying the two towels and a loaf of bread that stayed dry after the tsunami wiped out your house. For me, my piddling savings comes from downgrading our gym membership from family to couple, auto insurance from D as primary driver to secondary driver (don’t know whether that saved much at all), violin lessons, tennis pros, groceries (but conversely, my spouse and I eat out as a couple a lot more than we did before), and seltzer water (nobody but my D likes the fizz). The one big savings is private high school tuition $20k year, and plus you no longer need to give a donation to the parents fund.
My D seems to save up a lot of costly services and items for when she comes home on break knowing that dear old dad, will fork out the money. So I still end up paying for haircuts, contact lenses, clothes, shoes, jackets, cell phones, computers, and on and on. Don’t get me wrong, I love my children and am happy that I can do this for them, but it’s hard to think of what I might save in the face of such a wave of spending.
Plus, when your kids have the password to the Amazon.com account, forget about controlling their spending.
Here’s what we as parents have committed to pay for DD (most of it we already pay for anyway):
Car, auto insurance, gas, registration, maintenance, AAA, parking permit (no air fare she can drive since her school is less than 8 hours away)
heath, dental and vision insurance, glasses/contacts, medication and co-pays
instrument insurance and maintenance
per-professional/professional organization dues
cell phone
clothing, toiletries, school supplies
Student is expected to maintain scholarship needed to cover tuition, fees and books and hopefully some toward R&B
Student is expected to use personal savings for entertainment, snacks and eating out.
Student is expected to work to help pay for room and board as much as possible beginning second semester.
Parents will pay any remaining room and board fees after student’s best efforts, parents will provide additional support for room board and extra insurance required during a semester aboard.
Parents will pay any taxes owed on scholarships earned
Parents will pay for any pre-college orientation, testing and travel for college
Student is expected to provide for their own charitable donations, social clubs or organizations and traffic tickets or parking violations, library fines.
I don’t know that people actually go around thinking like this typically. It’s just that the question was asked, so we answered. And for those that do think this way, it’s probably just a “silver lining”.
Though truth be told, I do have this line of thinking every time my H and I go out to eat…I still marvel at the cheaper bill!
Water has been a surprisingly big savings, like almost half. Who knew.
We save on food, mostly in lunches for school.
Restaurant bills, yup. I could never resist a “let’s go out to ___, mom”. We still do it on breaks but the weekly brunch at our favorite place added up.
She had a PT job so had her own gas, clothing (clothing I considered unnecessary, anyway), out-with-friends budget.
Well, some people warn that you should not ‘stretch yourself too thin’ when paying for undergrad. To me, this is kind of like found money that will help when the fridge goes south, or the car needs new tires.
But, my silver lining has been tarnished by the comment above about ‘paying for taxes on the scholarship’. Crap. I never thought about that!
@2muchquan
you need to read this thread:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1838275-income-tax-on-scholarships-calculation-on-1040.html#latest
Contrary to the opinions voiced by some here, I don’t think it’s a silly question, especially for those of us whose kids are/were on financial aid.
I found it easier for us to cover our EFC than I expected due to these savings in the household budget:
Club dues, uniforms, etc for softball or swimming
Hotel, restaurants, gas, admission fees for all the out-of-town meets/tournaments, and fast food or restaurant meals for days of in-town tournaments.
Music lessons for the one kid
Way fewer miles put on the cars, so saving in gas, maintenance, wear-and-tear
Way fewer looooong showers
fewer lights left on in unoccupied rooms
fewer loads of laundry
Savings on their allowances - and once they went off to college, they were responsible for clothing (except for major things like winter coats), haircuts, entertainment, textbooks and school supplies, toiletries (that’s what summer jobs and work/study jobs are for!)
Less spent on groceries. The older one is such a big milk drinker that we figured we saved about $80 a month just on milk!
We got a significant savings on auto insurance, since they both went to schools far away.
The costs surrounding their club sports were pretty huge! (But not $10K)
I lost money when my kids left for college. One of my kids bought me a T-shirt saying “My kid and my money go to [College Name]” for Christmas.
I saved money when my kids left college.
@Ballerina016 With a forum name like that, I can’t believe you’d underestimate the cost of food. When the ballerinas come over for dinner, they consume huge amounts of food.
We will save at least $300/month from ballet lessons, pointe shoes, tights, leotards, and hair spray. Excluding food. 