This is not just an NYC phenomenon. I’ve worked with new grads based all over the place and the financial disconnect happens in Boston, Dallas, Dayton, Tulsa. Even low col cities have professionals in their 20’s who are still on the family payroll…
Fine and good if that’s the long-term plan and there’s a trust of some sort. But if you think it’s hard telling a 19 year old she doesn’t need a $400 pair of shoes on your tab, try telling that to a 35 year old who has never worried about the cost of anything!
Actually, how I read it, is that the implication in many other posts is that parents are ruining their children and missing an opportunity to teach the value of money if they don’t insist their kid get a part time job during the school year. This just simply isn’t the case. No one here should judge any other parent for how they need or want to manage their money and how much financial support they choose or are unable to choose for their college or young adult kid. Some kids are able to handle more independence, others deal with physical or mental health issues and might need more support. Still others go to college in extremely HCOL areas (Bay Area, looking at you). Some kids are natural savers, others are wired more as spenders. One gender might have higher expenses due to societal expectations of how they are supposed to look and dress. Discussions of money tend to bring up strong emotions, judgement, guilt, shame, etc. in our society. I think this thread is important because it shows the range and variety of styles of parenting (and teaching finances is a part of parenting as we
When are they “off the payroll”? To me it was simple, they get a very large chunk of money (ie hundreds of thousands of dollars) when they go to college. If they spend it all on college then they’d better be self-sufficient (barring minor things like keeping our old car or being on our cellphone plan). If they manage their money carefully, and choose to spend less during college (or pick a cheaper one), then they will start life after graduation with a larger financial cushion.
Financial management is about a lot more than getting a part time job and earning a couple of hundred dollars a month in college. It’s strange to emphasize the smallest part of the financial commitment for college (pocket money) and not involve the kid in the largest (cost of the college they attend).
Some of my kids lived in dumps in college, ds16 had 9 at one point dd14 had 7, plus she couch surfed her last semester for her 5 year masters in accounting (she did it in 4 1/2 so didn’t want a lease for the last one). Ds16 moved home after graduation (COVID, working from home so didnt resign with his roommates), then moved in with 4 friends. Dd19 has 3 roommates, she’s subletting her room in Boston to pay for a sublet with a friend in Brooklyn for a 2 month clinical. She and dd21 will move back home after graduation to work and pay loans, the older ones can afford to live on their own now ($2000+ a month), otherwise they’d have roommates.
Our kids know they can always stay here (again loans), and we will always loan them whatever they need.
Why does every thread like this turn into a referendum on individual parenting choices?!?!? It’s exhausting, and unnecessary. Everyone has a different set of circumstances and priorities that inform the choices they make for their families. I’m happy to share what works for us, when asked like the OP did. I don’t think he (?) asked for anything more than that.
For some maybe. But not in the Thumper family. Our two kids have radically different incomes, and we feel we were successful parents because we were there to support their goals.
They both had the same college spending money plan as I outlined above. It worked for our family and that is what matters.
We pay for tuition/room & board/books and supplies/incidentals/flights home for every break and holiday, clothing and shoes (frankly, not a big expense with two boys) plus any club sports fees. If they needed to take an Uber from a social event (hasn’t happened as both live walking distance to bars/restaurants) we’d pay for that as well. Once or twice a month I allow them to charge an off-campus meal on their linked CC. I won’t pay for entertainment or provide beer money (or $ for Starbucks) - that’s on them. Nor would I pay for a spring break trip (other than a flight home). My kiddos have summer jobs but I don’t expect them to work during the school year.
We saved and sacrificed so she can enjoy herself. Everyone’s value system is different; we want to give her the opportunity to live her college years to the fullest.
I dont think there is a right or wrong. It’s just different ways to approach it.
Why exhausting? You cannot expect a group of strangers on the internet to share parenting strategies, or to have the same financial resources, values, etc. If it’s exhausting, stop reading.
I find it fascinating. And it gives me insights into people I know IRL but can’t ask “why did you do that” when a stranger explains some of the logic.
We’ve had “skin in the game” threads where parents who could well afford to pay full freight without hardship insist on their kids taking out loans. I know people like that-- and it’s really not polite to ask “why make your kid take out a loan when you could skip the annual trip to Vail and pay off the entire balance without even blinking?” But I’ve learned from posters here what their logic is- and I gotta say, it wouldn’t have worked for me or my spouse (we had the other kind of loans- the “borrow or skip higher education” type of loans) but I totally understand now where people are coming from. And I’m MUCH less judgmental about the people I know who are proud of their kids paying down loans which are completely unnecessary from a financial perspective. No judgement. Works for them, wouldn’t work for me, doesn’t make it a bad parenting strategy.
Why come to an anonymous board if not to hear how other people do things? You can sit in your own kitchen and debate with your spouse (or affirm decisions you’ve already made) if you don’t want to hear alternative points of view.
Thiswill probably be controversial, but my parents didn’t keep things equal with my sister and I. I was a bit of a slacker in high school, I was allowed to choose a public school then oos public’s were not drastically more expensive than in state), my sister could choose any college. She worked very hard in high school and was second in her class.i understood completely. They could’ve afforded private, but I should’ve worked harder if I wanted to attend one.
Upthread @shawk said that we also don’t know an individual student’s medical health and that is so spot on. I do not want my daughter working in college because of the medical issues she faces and the triggers for it. She will have enough on her plate just with her major. I will work in order to take that burden off of her. However she will be expected to work during summers and watch what she spends.
To an outsider that may look indulgent, but her medical situation is not anyone else’s business.
We didn’t want our kids to work their first semesters in college (both had summer earnings for spending money). BUT both looked at the holes in their schedules and found jobs that fit nicely in the holes. They didn’t tell us until weeks after they had started working. And it all worked out fine.
I’ve walked two of these roads, and yes, they are a grind, but in a different kind of way than struggling to make rent or having to take the bus because you can’t afford a cab.
I guess if I were 100% confident that my kid will seamlessly transition from the upper middle class where she was born, to a similarly upper middle class career trajectory (i.e., McKinsey/Goldman/Cravath/Google/Jane Street with maybe a mid-career stopover at HBS or HLS), it may not be that important to learn to drink home brewed coffee instead of $7 Starbucks. If you’re on this track, the money for coffee will always be there, and frankly it’s more about maximizing your revenue line than squeezing the quarters from the expense line.
On the other hand, what I worry about is the risk of mean reversion. Maybe it’s that my kid decides she doesnt like Applied Nonparametric Statistics or Differential Equations, and opts for a major that doesn’t have the same career track. Or maybe AI kills off a bunch of previously promising majors, as seems to be happening with CS. Or even if she decides to law school as many non-quantitatively oriented smart kids often do, there’s usually a few lean years scraping by as a paralegal at BigLaw or in the DOJ before you start making money.
I guess what I’m saying is that for me, learning about how to be happy with less, is probably a lesson I want my kids to learn in college.
That’s quite fair and I wish I had phrased that differently! I do agree that different funding or subsidizing choices certainly do not lead to set outcomes—it’s simplistic and incorrect to imply that it does, and that part of my post could be interpreted that way. Thanks for pointing that out
And to add to your fine post- none of us can time the labor market.
Recent study which showed that students who graduated in 2009 (so June, after the Lehman/Bear Stearns meltdown) in certain sectors took almost 10 years to catch up financially. The legal profession- not just fell off a cliff, but a complete restructuring. I-banking of course, but the impact radiated through the consulting and accounting firms, ancillary services like payroll advisory and commercial real estate.
We’d all like to think that our ambitious and hardworking kids will graduate into a “name your price” economy and maybe they will. Or maybe it will be a moderate grind to find a job, and the kid who thinks she’s destined for Goldman ends up as a risk analyst at a P&C insurance company. (Fine career-- but not as lucrative). Or maybe they graduate into a recession as many of us older parents did and end up scrambling (and groveling!) to get a job, any job.
Friends son was unfortunate enough to graduate from a top 20 (not T-14 but close to it) law school in 2009. His offer from the previous summer was first postponed and then rescinded. He got a temp job doing doc review once he finished taking the bar. Then he decided to move (NYC was flooded with unemployed new lawyers at that point) and took the bar in a different state. Got a full time job as a paralegal with a big firm (this is a young man who was admitted in two different states- and he’s working as a paralegal).
Believe me, there were lean years. It took forever to get back on track.
