As D moves off away from a meal plan, I’m wondering what you guys give your child. Here’s what we do:
pay tuition
pay books
pay dorm
[/QUOTE]
This year, she’ll be making her own meals (with roommates) and we’re thinking how much money to put into her account overall…she does work a part-time job (but not all months). thanks!
I think my daughter spends about $50/wk on food to cook at her apartment. She also has a $600 dining dollars at the school (which I think mostly goes toward smoothies and snacks), and she eats out sometimes. She has a boyfriend and they tend to eat together, so half the time at her house, half at his with them splitting the cost. The school also has a little grocery store and she can use her dollars there and bring food home. The $600 is from her coach. If she didn’t have it, she wouldn’t spend that money at school.
I was sending her boxes from Amazon Prime but she told me to stop as she preferred just to buy her own food.
We did $300 per month, totally off the meal plan. It allowed for decent groceries and an occasional meal out or takeout/grab and go if super busy. It was probably a little more than actually needed (ate vegetarian a lot) but saw it as win/win as it was much cheaper than the college’s meal plan.
$50 a week agreed upon credit card allowance for use at grocery stores.
We make sure her tuition and rent is covered. Food, books, wifi, extras…are on her dime with a job. She uses coupons, watches for “student specials”, rotates group cooking with friends, and packs her lunches. She also works full time in the summer and saves her money knowing expenses will be coming. Might seem a little brutal…but it gives her a very good appreciation for every dollar she spends…AND every dollar she borrows in student loans. The kid has learned to be frugal and think ahead. (not to say we wouldn’t send her a couple hundred here and there if she needed it…she knows we would in a heartbeat…but so far, she’s never asked for money) She was given a student credit card as a freshman with a $250 credit limit with no cosigner. She’s done such a good job with payments, her credit limit is over $2000 now…no cosigner…and she never carries more than a 10% balance for long. She’ll graduate with a solid work history and really good credit.
We divided the board cost by 10 and put that amount in the kid’s account each month. We reevaluated that after a couple of months, and found it was TOO much so we cut back.
We did not give money for meals eaten out…that was something the kiddos needed to pay.
I’m having the same dilemma in our house…I’m thinking to buy $500 in dining dollars good at the cafes or dining hall at the school (that would pay for lunch 5x/week) and $50/week cash for the remainder. I can always buy more dining dollars but they can’t be rolled over so start with this amount and supplement as needed. As a piggy-back, hope you don’t mind, how do I use 529 monies for this? Keep receipts or maybe buy gift cards to the local grocer and just keep these receipts?
I gave my kids what I would have paid for their food at school.
@NEPatsGirl For 529 purposes, you can withdraw the amount your college reports as the off campus room and board estimate on their cost of attendance. For us, the rent alone exceeds that amount but if it did not, we’d need to keep receipts.
My kids attended colleges where meal plans were mandatory the first year, not required after that. So from year 2 forward, they were off meal plans and that was simply one thing I didn’t have to pay for, and I expected them to cover from earnings, as part of transitioning to greater levels of responsibility as they got older. I did send care packages from time-to-time – especially if I saw easily packable items like tuna packets on sale a the grocery store. It wasn’t a regular thing,probably just 2 or 3 times a year on average. If I visited them at college, I took them out for restaurants meals.
My kids didn’t starve or complain. They were highly aware of all campus events that entailed free food. My D. had a bartending/catering job that gave her access to wonderful food at all sorts of venues - and generally whatever hadn’t been eaten at the end of the event was divvied among the staff to take home. So bottom line – if a student wants to eat better than their budget would normally allow, food service jobs often afford extra perks.
Every family is different when it comes to budget and what they can afford. I also think It is important for our kids to chip in to help out with their education. At the same time, if I am paying $$$ for my kids to get an education, it doesn’t make sense for me not to give my kids enough money for them to have healthy food. My kids worked while in college, but they didn’t make enough money to feed themselves.
It might depend on whether the student has cooking facilities available. That was pretty much a must-have for my kids. I don’t think they could have earned enough to be paying for meals at the dining hall or eating at campus cafes all the time. My son was always a rice-cooker kind of guy – and also vegetarian for most of his college years.
My D is moving off campus and does not want any meal plan. We don’t really give her a budget but that’s because she doesn’t spend money… if she spends $3 she asks permission. So… We are going to put about $600 -$700 on her “card” and that will allow her to eat lunches and occasional dinners on campus. Any extra money carries over to the next semester; if we need to add we will. She still has money left from last semester. She will be going food shopping and cooking most of her dinners- my guess is she will spend about $50 a week (?) depending…
Mine is on about $75 a week. They sometimes would pool with their roommates and make big meals and the rest of the time they cooked for themselves…a decade ago #1 managed on $50 a week but food as slowly increased.
It also depends on whether they have a grocery store available.
Neither of my kids did – and there was no way to change that without supplying them with cars. In both cases, there was no supermarket within walking distance of their off-campus housing.
So when they went off the meal plan, they got the same amount the meal plan would have cost in cash. Expensive? Yes. But it was cheaper than a car.
When my daughter moved off campus we gave her, in installments, the amount we had paid for room and board on campus the previous year.
I paid my both son’s credit card bills, and had no pre-set limit, but they were (one is still a student) fiscally conservative. The food bill for one was much less expensive than meal plan, and I’ve not paid much attention for the other.
$300/month for my D in off-campus apartment with full kitchen. That is meant to cover food, paper and cleaning products, and drugstore items that I pay for when she’s home (like contact lens solution and OTC meds). She can spend that money however she wants, including a few meals out, takeout, Starbucks, etc. I put the money in her account and do not look at her debit charges. It’s more than she actually needs but as @doschicos noted, it’s still a savings for us compared to a meal plan.
Don’t skimp on food money for your student. You don’t want them living on only ramen noodles (which is what college students do when they are broke). Make sure you give them enough to eat reasonably well (I don’t mean eating steak every night, but able to eat a balanced diet - remember fruits and veggies are expensive). If you can, give them food money in ways they can only get food with it (grocery store gift cards, dining dollars, etc.)
Yes, they need to learn to be responsible, but they also need to be healthy.
I gave 175/week, LA is an expensive place, and sometimes there’s no time for cooking