<p>My son is also at a “meet full need” and it’s gone up every year. This year was $3500. Last year $2500 and the year before $1500. My kid also does better when he has an extremely busy schedule. </p>
<p>Max & I were just discussing this very topic. We both worked in high school and college and paid our own way. He would gladly support the kids because it took him a lot longer to graduate because of the nature of his work. You can’t exactly attend class when you’re on international spy duty. ;)) Being the mean (& practical) member of the family, I expect both kids to pay their incidentals.</p>
<p>Spygirl has not yet had a job due to very time consuming summer EC’s. However, I expect her to get a job this summer and save as much as possible for her own spending money and she seems happy to do so.</p>
<p>A friend, whose 3 children went to in-state schools, set a $3000 minimum before their freshman year. This was to cover spending money and books. They all made their minimum and worked through the school year and summers.</p>
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<p>I think (as with everything) it depends on the kid, the parents, and the environment they were raised in. I didn’t work at all during high school, and then went on to work 30+ hours a week during college (and much more during the summers). I had several friends who didn’t work in high school, but worked regularly during college (both during the school year and during the summer). And I met several students in college who worked during high school and worked occassionally during college but were very bad with they’re money, saving none of it and spending it all on (what I would consider) frivalous stuff. It just depends on the kid and partly on how the kid was raised. I have never thought that working a job during high school was a requirement for anyone to develop a good work ethic or good financial sense, and I haven’t seen that be the major factor in a lot of the students I went to school with.</p>
<p>Vladden, kids can do different things here at 14. I know ritas hires at that age. So do amusement parks (for merchandise or food type jobs, not running a ride) and grocery stores.</p>
<p>Most companies choose not to hire that young because the child labor laws are much more strict (can’tgo more then x hrs without a break, . can’t work more then x hours in a week during school, etc). I used to know the laws ten years ago because I had some young kids that reported to me and I had to schedule them. Most places would rather have 16 because the rules are less strict.</p>
<p>My S didn’t work during school due to sports, but he worked every summer and during winter breaks. One summer he worked two jobs waiting tables. He saved about 3000-4000 each summer which was his spending money for the upcoming school year. </p>
<p>In contrast, my D has held a part-time job during HS since her sophomore year and works full time during the summers. I don’t want her to work during her first year of college until I see how she manages her course load. Because she has had a steady income, she has gotten into the habit of spending too freely (there is always next week’s paycheck mentality). It will be interesting to see how she fares this summer having to save for the upcoming year.</p>
<p>I think it helps kids to learn to budget and handle a checking account when they have a job. Also, I found with S that he was a lot more frugal when it came to spending the money he earned than spending my money. </p>
<p>My son worked since he was 16.5 We could have given him spending $, but felt he should earn his play $. He wasn’t required to pay for school as we’d pretty much told them since they were little that they were going…</p>
<p>He was a liberal arts major and he applied for several job and got a few offers within weeks of college graduation. One was a sales job for a very large company. He was amazed to find all kinds of majors there when they had a (I forget what it was called–) prospective employee night at a professional hockey game. There were even engineering majors there( which I didn’t understand unless they were applying there to work in IT or something) These were people who had made it through a round of two of interviews, not a career fair. What he found most interesting was that he was one of the only ones with any actual work experience! He had about 6 years of jobs on his resume and these other guys hadn’t worked since HS (if at all!) When the interviewer asked why they should hire him over some of the other candidates he told them because he was the only one with WORK EXPERIENCE (and therefore customer service experience etc). It also shows commitment, hard work and responsibility (beyond the classroom).</p>
<p>That’s why they should work! AND so they can learn to manage their money, and have independence…</p>
<p>"I’ve never really understood the “free summer” “goodbye to childhood” or the “needs every minute to study mentality. Personal opinion of course!”</p>
<p>lol…my opinion as well. </p>
<p>My kids worked in the summers and made anywhere between $2800 and $3500 the summer after high school…each kid was alittle different and had different jobs so it depended on how many hours they could “get.” They started Memorial Day weekend and all three worked through the second week of August taking a week off before they headed off to college so 10 weeks. They all worked starting the summer after they turned 16 and had driver’s licenses which for all three was after sophomore year of high school, so they all worked 3 summers before they started college.</p>
<p>Around my neck of the woods you really can’t find work in a business etc. until you are 16 and if you are lucky to find work at 15 you are limited to 20 hours a week. Most clubs and business owners don’t need to hire 15 year olds so it’s a double speedbump to job procurement prior to 16.</p>
<p>My HS son worked full time for half of this July and all of August, and has continued to work 15-20 hrs weekly. When I helped him file his tax return, I was shocked to find out that he made over $8,000 in 5 months! Unfortunately, he has been splurging quite a bit with all that money (new computer and tablet, phone, clothes, watch, not to mention spoiling his girlfriend), and has saved under $2,000 :|.</p>
<p>We have always stressed that his scholastic performance was the priority, and that by qualifying for large merit scholarships, he was essentially earning more than any typical teenage job would pay. He, however, likes to have discretionary income, and also has a fierce independent streak. He has worked in some capacity since he was a HS freshman. He got up every Saturday at 6 a.m. for two years to clean the gym (including scrubbing the toilets) in exchange for personal training that we refused to pay for. He worked the scoreboard for our local football league. He taught guitar. A lot of opportunities are there if your teenager thinks outside the box.</p>
<p>My son played varsity baseball in HS in a very competitive league and every summer was taken by summer league baseball or camps. He never worked for money. My D worked part time the last 2 summers of HS since she also went to sports and music camps.
My H and I didn’t really expect them to work in college because we wanted them to concentrate on their studies. My S also played in a sports team. However, my D did manage to work 5 hrs a week on campus and she also taught SAT because she liked to spend on extras.
We knew they would have the rest of their lives to work.</p>
<p>All three of my children worked every summer after junior year of high school and throughout college. I think it’s a wonderful use of their time. Each summer built on the one before. They would try to get the best job that they could with the least hours. For instance my youngest son who is a freshman in college now, worked tutoring elementary children ten hours a week junior summer and made twenty dollars an hour. He had “work experience”, references etc when he applied for and successfully got an office job twenty four hours a week the summer after senior year. (he still had lots of time for other things in his life) He will probably go back there again this summer. This experience will look great on his resume when he applies for summer internships down the road. My older two children took the same approach and one of them is working as a software engineer at a company where he did a summer internship. Work is great for them!</p>
<p>My older son is a comp sci guy and did very well - earning $25/hour 40 hour week summer before college and after freshman year, twice that I think in internships after that. Younger son worked for me somewhat less than full time, doing architectural renderings. I paid him minimum wage. He spent one summer in college working on his Arabic, but since then he’s been working at his college. Last summer he got $10/hour plus one meal a day and a housing subsidy. He’s doing the same work during the school year very part time.</p>
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<p>No major company pays $50/hr for internships. I can’t recall ever hearing anyone getting more than 7K/month, which would work out to about $39.77/hr (though they also had housing, so if you add that I guess you might say it was effectively $50/hr). If your son made $50/hr in cash that’s certainly atypical, and must have been at a very small very selective company.</p>