The $100/week figure passes the sniff test I think. We’ll see.
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That’s what our number worked out to as well.
Interesting, for those tracking wait lists. My d was acceoted to Wisconsin last week and just got an offer of $12 k a year. They don’t typically give merit fo out of state kids. Looks like they underestimated their yield.
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Not sure if they are amazing deals, but I did check off a number of things on my list of items to buy to prepare for moving her in, including:
a woozo fan
a shower caddy
power strip/surge protector
brita pitcher and filters
large soft moving totes
D24 has been tasked with finding her bedding and towels today.
Excellent! I like that the class at her college includes “analysis of budgeting and tax planning, managing liquidity, financing large purchases, protecting assets and income, analyzing investment information, examining alternative investment types, and investing money for retirement.” I wish I had learned these things in my early 20s instead of much later in life!
First years for my son’s college are i think required to be on their unlimited meal plan. I am hoping he eventually gets an on campus job but we both agreed that he should probably settle in first and get a feel for how his school year is going as the college has a reputation for being kind of a grind school.
On the subject of books… how much do textbooks actually cost? S24’s school has budgeted $1800 (depends on classes taken, of course), but is that really how much students spend on books in a year?!
We way way over budgeted for books. Mostly our D was buying “codes” for online books, and using free material from her professors. The couple of actual text books she needed she bought used for very little money.
We only paid for books her first year (and then she took care of it) but I don’t think we spent more than $400 or 500 total for both semesters. (The school estimated $1000).
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Similar experience for our D20. Most expensive semester was $350, and $250 of that was for one book. I’m sure it is major-specific, though (she studied Social Work). I’m anticipating higher costs for D24 (Chemical Engineering).
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FWIW, my D was a chem E.
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that’s encouraging!
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Another question for the group. Is anyone buying tuition insurance? I did not do this with my D20, but am considering it this go around.
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We pay in installments which I think makes the insurance required. Don’t quote me on it, but I know its that way for our BS.
I purchased both tuition and dorm insurance. It’s a significant enough expense for us that the relatively small fee for those two things seems worth it. (I never buy extended warranties or cell phone insurance, as a data point, but for this new experience it is providing me peace of mind.)
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Wow. congrats!! Does that change the calculus for D24 and Syracuse. Vs Wisconsin ??
Just back from a 3 weeks vacation our of country. Now feels like we need to start focus on the college stuff. We have not yet bought anything for the dorm. Will have to start doing this soon.
In regards to discretionary spending I think 100 per week seems like a good number to go with. We have not yet discussed budget for this yet but need to do it. Another expense we need to consider is flight tickets and we are expecting him to fly a 3 to 4 times per year as we are on opposite coasts this will get expensive quickly if we don’t plan in advance. Do parents from OOS typically go to the parents weekend? We have not yet planned this.
Are you flying yours down for Thanksgiving? Our current plan is to just fly him home for Christmas and summer break. Don’t have plans of going to this year’s parent weekend as it is only like a month after move-in but have plans of going to next year’s family weekend and tack on a college visit or two for my D27 who will be a junior then.
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I think if you can make it to parent’s weekend freshman year, it’s a good thing to do. It also depends on the child, my oldest would have been okay but I think my youngest would have a hard time watching everyone else with their parents but not having hers around. Parents weekend is 3 weeks after dropoff so pretty ridiculous to fly nearly across the country but this year we are doing it. I am guessing we won’t next year as it will be less important for my child to have us there.
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We’re doing it S24’s first year too. We will evaluate whether we want to do it again.
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There was no parents weekend for S21s small conservatory so we are planning on going for S24. Seems like something to do once, right?
We bought tuition insurance for S21 each year but I didnt realize until this year that it only covered the first 10K of tuition. For S24 it is so expensive that we are going to skip it.
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My kid will be 4+ hours drive away and parents weekend is right before fall break. I’ve booked a refundable room and will play it by ear. My parents will actually be going through a few weeks after school starts are are planning to visit and take her to lunch and do a check-in, and we’ve talked about how she may get homesick but it’s really just chunks of time - and if she needs a visit I have driven down there as a day trip many times and could be there for lunch if she needed me.
My one worry about parents weekend is that everyone else’s parents will be there and she’d be bummed we weren’t.
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