@curiositycat333, that was part of the learning for the internship. What is it like to be living off of poverty wages. How do you make choices. What do you prioritize. She has a decent amount of money in her savings, but she wasn’t supposed to use anything but the stipend. She is a pretty big rule follower and only used the stipend. I did send one care package with cheese, dried fruit, and chocolate. She didn’t turn it down. I did get some funny texts about how much 5 lbs of rice cost and how great the farmers market was. And really she isn’t paying for room, electricity, water, cable, or even Netflix (uses my account). I’m pretty proud of her for making it through the two months. She does get credit for one class too. FYI, no gas because no car. She learned to talk the bus where she needed to go in a city she had never been too… Cleveland! There is a lot of free entertainment this week. 
@srk2017 Naviance at our school is wonky right now. Someone entered S17 SAT score in the wrong category. It’s a May 2016 score and it shows up in the 2400 scale score. (So it looks terrible) His GPA hasn’t been upgraded in a year.
And best of all there is a bug in Naviance itself when you go to the scatterplots. The checkbox says it’s unweighted GPA yet it shows the weighted. Have to turn it to weighted and then back off to get the unweighted GPA values. I hope it’s going to get an update soon.
The students enter their own schools they were accepted and rejected at. But the GPA & test scores are supposed to be entered electronically somehow.
QOTD for off campus housing
For SD14 we (split with her mom) give her $400 a month. That covers her share of the utilities (she is in a house), all groceries/meals, eating out, entertainment, etc. It is up to her to budget it out. It doesn’t save much if any over the on campus plans but it gives her a lot more flexibility in how she spends the money versus fixed meal plans and a dorm.
@paveyourpath So nice to have a generous grandparent! Maybe you could open a discussion with your child about establishing a savings account for a car or security deposit with the excess grandparent allowance? We have an overly generous Grandma in our lives and a lot of the fun money she sends through me ends up in the kids car funds (with their blessing of course). They will both have an amazing down payment for a nice car when they are ready for it after school.
@mtrosemom Opps I must have missed something. My mistake. Was scanning through the posts. Didn’t realize it was an internship. Sounds like a great learning experience.
D12 went to a school in a city and only got around by public transit.
Made the mistake of giving her a Netflix account for xmas a few years ago. Need to close it and just have her use ours. It’s pointless now that they have separate accounts & she’s back living at home.
As per our GC Naviance is just an info tool right now, not used for college apps.
@snoozn D12 got a laptop as her H.S. graduation present. Her major also required sweet laptop & lots of disk space plus expensive software. We considered that cost of her education.
Was actually thinking S17’s laptop was going to need to be replaced before this year starts. (it’s getting on in years now and a few of the keys don’t work.) He will be taking AP Comp Science. Honestly to program you don’t need the latest greatest and fanciest computer. Compilers don’t actually take that much CPU time. Will discuss with him. I tend to buy my kids bit items like this as they need them. And I tend to use old computers for way to long. (I actually open them up and replace parts myself.) I tried to give him one I was gifted in the spring. But now I’m using it so his loss.
My biggest money headache issue now is we need another car. Four drivers, two cars in a suburban area with little public transportation. I’m supposedly looking at used cars, because the car we buy will mostly be used by S17 & D12. But without it I’ll be spending a lot of time driving one or the other & their arguing over who gets to use a car. S17 has a completed schedule and who knows were D12 will be working in the fall.
QOTD: $300/month sounds like a lot if the kid is in a dorm and on meal plan. S17 pretty frugal–never asks to buy clothes unless he starts having to do laundry more than once/week. Maybe buys 3-4 games/year including gifts for friends. No girlfriend so far either. He hasn’t bought much with his ATM in 4 weeks at his summer program.
Right now he has a checking account connected to his accumulated savings account from gift checks, contest winnings, and $25/month we’ve been putting in since he was born. I think that will be for expenses besides things we cover. We’ll cover textbooks, new laptop, dorm stuff, and clothes shopping during breaks. We’ll see how that amount gets depleted. I suspect he’ll get a paid job during summers at least.
Since he’s so frugal, if it seems like he is passing up human interaction to save money, we’ll figure out an amount to contribute and tell him to go see a movie or something.
Saving with kids away: The insurance company says that if he doesn’t take a car to college, we can save $1000-2000 on car insurance. He almost never drives anyway, so the big car insurance payment rankles. I don’t think food overall will go down too much. We are already pretty much at the minimum for water use, so I doubt that or other utilities will go down.
Forced community service: We have a 60 hour graduation requirement and 200 hours to get a colored cord at graduation. I agree that forcing people to be altruistic seems ironic at best. DS has loads of hours as a robotics camp counselor, teaching programming classes, tutoring. They even count his research hours since the UC is a non-profit. But, he hasn’t done much standard community service.
Blue Apron: @RightCoaster We hated it. DH is the cook in the family–he’s actually quite a chef and has taught the kids well. He got Blue Apron to see if they would have new ideas. They didn’t. Too bland and too much emphasis on carbs. Far too much cauliflower. Lots of wasted packaging.
Thanks for the support @carolinamom2boys!
OK, I’m up because of leg cramps! Was thinking about fake-kid as I was writhing in pain, like I always do. Can anyone explain to me, if you follow a college via, say, Twitter or Facebook…how would they be able to deduce who you are, unless you have your real name in your profile? It’s not like email, where you can click a link and they can attribute that to you. Do they have someone trying to match up Twitter handles with email addresses on file. Probably not, right? So, you don’t get any ‘interest credit’ for following colleges on social media, as far as I can tell.
I thought I’d heard people say: “Show interest by following on XYZ School”…but I’m not so sure.
Don’t get me wrong, fake-kid tells me a lot about what he sees on FB and Twitter!
I do think we can pay our efc because we forgo things like cable and eating out on a regular basis. No need for pity, just different life choices. Live and let live. :)>-
D will not get an allowance in college. We will cover all necessities and she will be expected to have a campus job and/or a summer job to cover entertainment/spending money.
@2muchquan - try drinking tonic water for the leg cramps.
@nw2this The pity comment has to do with the attitude of superiority for sacrifices. My comment probably came out the wrong way. I just hate the judgment I find on this site. It’s the posts where posters say, education is important to us so we’ve always lived in a tiny house, didn’t maintain the house, drive cars 30 years old, never went on vacation, never dined out, no new clothes, etc. I don’t think those people should feel superior in any way.
Live and let live indeed. Everyone makes different choices. Fortunately, there are lots of good college choices for those that chose to live differently.
Re: the QOTD. D has worked all through high school and will have 2 jobs senior year. She pays for her car insurance, cell phone data overages, and discretionary spending so she has no savings. She never received much if any cash at birthdays and Christmas, always things or gift cards. Given her chosen programs of study, she will not have a job after senior year of college. She starts a summer language institute right after graduation and then all long breaks will be study abroad. I also don’t want her working in college unless it’s a TA position or internship. So she is going to be back in my pocket for at least 5 years, which I am fine with.
I havent calculated my savings from her being gone but it will be substantial as I am selling the house and getting one half the size, which will cut down on the mortgage, utilities, and car expenses.
@itsgettingreal17 very well said! I totally agree. I think it is a balance.
Sharing a little good news - only one more SAT subject test (Physics) to go in October - DS got 800 on Math Level 2. Glad he doesn’t have to take it again. Hope all went well for those who took the SAT or Subject Tests.
re Allowance - we have not been very consistent - gave some allowance for a year or so but one son spent it all on fun stuff - games, sneakers, candy & the other son refused to spend a penny and was gifted at manipulating us into buying a great deal of technology for him and claiming he needed it for school projects, contests etc. I do think it is time to get them debit cards - they have very small bank accounts.Younger son has a FULL TIME job this summer (min wage) but will likely make around $3000 or more - I think he wants to spend it towards a car - which we’ll help him with as well (glad he’s moved off NEEDING to get a Chevy Monte Carlo - he became a Breaking Bad fan). I will say he is now starting to actually understand how expensive some things are and how hard it is to accumulate money at a $9/hr rate.
I don’t know yet how to teach older son about money in a meaningful way - he does not have a job and we have indulged his requests for computer equipment etc. Will stay he is quite a scavenger & repurposer - harvests components for equipment to reuse, knows what older equipment can do for certain things (e.g. his growing server farm) and wants that bc it is cheaper. But he currently has no clue how to budget a certain amount of money for a week of food and basics etc. I suppose it is a bit of a relief that so far he is not asking for much money except on occasion for a school trip or when going out with friends etc. Just want him to end up in a career where he is happy and not worry about money (we thankfully can help him out) nor become very wasteful of it.
Anybody feels that June SAT has a harsh curve? D’s only admission standard test was the June test, which she decided last June to take and couldn’t be convinced to take anything earlier. She got 1550, essay 21, with 5 missed in reading. I am concerned about the concordance, which only converts this to ACT 34.
She is done, as per her plan, NMSF confirmed, but I am concerned. There are kids in her school who had tutors and multiple tests and better/ or super scores in old SAT and ACT. D scoffs at them “their scores just illustrate the power of tutors”. I would hate to see that she was unfavorably compared because she only has this one score.
@SincererLove The math curve was brutal (my DS17 got one more math question right, but his math score dropped 20 points), but the EBRW curve wasn’t too bad (compared to May’s test). I wouldn’t worry about the scores of some of the other kids, a 1550/34 makes her competitive anywhere. 
My kingdom (which ain’t much) for a 1550/34!
A great score that shouldn’t be a roadblock anywhere. Congrats!
For me, the most annoying aspect of CC, is how judgmental folks can be, on anything from which college and major you choose, to TV show you happen to like. It’s really crazy. Who are we to judge the reasons a family chooses one college over another? If someone chooses college A over B, because it’s cheaper, good for them. If they choose B over A, because it’s higher ranked, good for them. If they choose C, because it’s closer to home, good for them. Who am I to judge what’s best for their student and family?
I remember getting pulled into an argument, because a poster wrote “our college search” and started to get slammed for writing “our”, instead of “my child’s”. Really? Based on three words, you’re willing to jump to the conclusion that the parent is some sort of overbearing monster that’s not allowing their child the “freedom” to choose what’s right for them? WTH? It’s just THREE words, and now folks think they have insight into the poster’s soul. It’s ridiculous. ~X(
@SincererLove – agree that 1550 on the new SAT is a very good score (I personally have no idea about ACT concordance but a 34C is great). And early congrats on NMSF!!!