DS13 has had 2 co-op rotations so once he started his first one I stopped giving him money. However freshman year he was in the dorms and I gave about $100 a month. The next year he was in an on campus apartment with no food plan so I gave him $80 a week. My opinion is if you give them the money they will find a way to spend it… So only give them what you can afford. If they really need it they can always ask. 
^^^^^
yeah @Tgirlfriend , my son says having a girlfriend would require spending money and time on her and he’s not willing to do that.
He went to the prom with this very lovely girl and she has asked him seldom times for another date. He says he feels he hardly has any free time and doesn’t want to even bother. Ha. He might be a single guy for a long long time.
@RightCoaster It seems like many college students use debit cards as cash these days. A credit card is also helpful for emergencies away at college.
My wife has a major crush on Chip Gaines of Fixer Upper - HGTV and Cable will stay.
We also got D a college credit card through her regular bank so she can start to establish credit. It is in her name and tied to her account. She is responsible for paying the bill and monitoring the activity on it. So far she has been on top of it. She “earns” 1% percentage of what she charges and earns another 1% when she pays the bill on time. The earnings are deposited into her bank account. We will probably do the same for S so he can start to establish credit. However, I will probably need to watch him more because he is more apt to forget that his payment is due. Might need to put him on autopay with the tie to his relatively large savings account!
Good QOTD. Very interesting.
@thinmints No worries! You were just telling me what I wanted to hear! I never know what counts as community service anymore. I think so many kids are forced into it due to things like NHS and the like…it’s hard to know if they are doing it because they want to, or because they have to.
I think we should do away with ED and forced community service…although I have no idea how. 
QOTD: S will get similar to what D14 got. She had her own savings for random spending money. We did provide necessities (normal clothes, toiletries, etc). When she got an apartment we provided enough for those bills and a little toward food, but she’s on her own beyond that (but again she’s free to restock from home on household stuff). She makes better choices about what to spend money on when its her own money.
Money: I won’t be giving D an allowance in college. She’ll be responsible for any entertainment funds, casual dining, movies, etc. We’ll pay for books, transportation, and school fees, but any personal wants will have to be funded by her. She should qualify for a work-study job if her chosen college has those, so she will hopefully be able to work during college, though she may choose to start after 1st semester freshman year. D already has a very solid amount of money in savings, so she could easily live off of that for at least a year of college. Our policy will be that if she needs money for some reason in particular, we will always be available and happy to help, but it is her general responsibility.
Cable: Our kids enjoy telling us that we could save a lot of money by cutting cable, since they see it as one of the dinosaurs of the past. But H and I enjoy watching the news on TV too much to cut the cord. D17 and S20 only ever watch TV if we’re watching sports together. They saw they wouldn’t miss it, but I know they would be pretty disappointed if we couldn’t watch the Saints play every week on a big TV.
We would miss the sports, but D and I agreed it makes more sense to just go a restaurant and watch since we dine out every weekend anyway.
@2muchquan I have always thought required and volunteering were an ironic combination.
@Tgirlfriend I suspect all kids involved in Greek life require a larger budget. But, when @itsgettingreal17 asked her question, I interpreted it as things beyond typical normal food budget bc most freshman are stuck with required meal plans.
My kids live on very tight budgets, as do we. It is why the CC mantra of being frugal and cutting out the unnecessary as being the way to meet your efc drives me crazy, bc seriously, everyone who can’t pay their efc just doesn’t know how to budget.
QOTD We gave our older kids $100/month until they had regular jobs (Jan of freshman year for S, summer after for older D). We still purchased their necessary clothes, books and supplies, and paid for their phones (family plan). What we do for D will depend on where she goes to school and how the dining situation fits her needs.
Cable We switched from cable to dish 10 years ago after a move. We dropped the dish 7 years ago. Haven’t missed tv at all! We use tunnelbear to watch Olympics
Oh, and ESPN is working to offer a stand alone package. Whether it will be an economical alternative to cable remains to be seen.
@rightcoaster there are a couple of good cards for students starting out. We got the Discover It Card. Very low starter limit, 1% back on everything, free FICO score each month, easy to manage online. Downside is its Discover and some places wont take it. D14’s FICO is now in the upper 700s just by using it appropriately and having it on autopay 
D was able to get that one without a cosigner. There are other similar cards (Citi, Capital One) but some of them will still reject applicants with NO credit history.
cable I can’t live without it! I spend about $225 but that also includes 2 dvd boxes and internet and home phone.
money both my kids are blessed to have a lot in their savings. From generous grandparents on birthdays and holidays, and then their bat mitzvahs which they got tons of money and I put it all into their accounts - they are pretty frugal so I don’t worry about them blowing it. I will give my D16 who is leaving for college in a month an allowance but I haven’t decided what yet. She will just use her debit card and then I can replenish it to what I see fit. She did just get a credit card that is tied to her checking account and every month her bill will automatically be paid in full. That is just to help her build her credit so when she gets out into the real world she can rent an apt., buy a new car etc.
My kids don’t have an allowance but they only thing they have to pay for is when they go out with their friends. If they are with me I pay for it all -(One way to keep my kids wanting to be with me!)
@2muchquan my son does not participate at all in “forced community service”. The only thing he has done thru the years is organize a lax food drive which does not take much effort and he tutors some kids at school once in a while.
He has no interest in joining a church group, after school service thing, special olympics, hospital stuff, etc. He’s not into it, doesn’t have a lot of time for it, and I told him I would not “force” him to do any. He knows lots of other kids volunteer way more than him and he accepts the possible consequences. I’m fine with it too. Do what you like to do, not what looks good on a high school resume. We’ll see how it plays out. With the schools he is looking at I don’t think it matters much at all.
cable : we got rid of ours about 2 years ago. My husband misses the sporting stuff sometimes since we don’t get ESPN, but it isn’t worth what it was costing us for a few football games.
money: We won’t give any extra money for incidentals, although we will pay for clothes, cell phone, books and travel home. S will get a job this spring/summer and he can fund anything else we wants out of that. My mom always sends $50 a month to her grandkids when they are in college, so he will have at least that much.
QOTD: I have not figured “allowance” out yet but suspect we will be on the minimal to nothing plan. We will cover his cellphone, insurance, clothes (shopping at home over breaks or me ordering online) books and fees. Anything else (entertainment, dining above and beyond his meal plan, recreation) will be on his dime and completely dependent on how much he saves from working. I would prefer he not work during first semester freshman year but we will see. He will save in the summer for fall spending monies and monies earned past his Feb drama trip that he is funding on his own. It’s really not any different than how things operate at our house now.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek I respectfully disagree. We know how to budget (although that cell phone bill would imply otherwise…but trust me we’ve shopped! we aren’t willing to give up the unlimited data and text and insuring the phones though). Our EFC is in no way affordable, it would be my entire salary annually after taxes. There is absolutely no way we could have streamlined enough to save that kind of money with 2 layoffs and 4 kids to send to college unless we were not saving for retirement, sold our house, moved somewhere with a drastically lower cost of living and at that point neither of us would have the jobs we do have. Travel is our one luxury expense but I’ll take the cheaper college options and the family memories made on our trips over paying our full EFC somewhere. And honestly, even if we had given up every trip ever taken…it wouldn’t be enough to cover our EFC for more than two years, tops, likely less than that.
@eandesmom I think I wasn’t clear in my post. I was being sarcastic. 
@Mom2aphysicsgeek and clearly I am overly sensitive to the topic. Didn’t get that at all. Sorry!
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Ha! I skimmed your post and missed the sarcasm too.