My kid didn’t need to contribute funds toward college, but the summer before freshman year, they didn’t follow through on plans for a summer of research which would likely have led to a published paper. So when they had no plans, I said, “You’ve done nothing to plan for this summer, and it’s not as if you didn’t know where you were going to college since last December - no excuse. You can darn well get a JOB, working in a supermarket. The pay is decent (summer resort area in desperate need of workers), it’s air conditioned, the place seems to treat the help well, you can earn your own spending money so that you won’t have to ask us for money and have to tell us how you’re spending it, and you can learn how one gets money, which will inform your spending decisions.”
Kid worked hard, earned maybe 8K, was fried to a crisp at the end of each shift. We matched it and made a Roth IRA deposit to the max kid was allowed, but gave the kid all that they had earned and helped kid open a bank account with a branch near the school, get a bank card, etc. Interestingly, when a school trip abroad came up for right after freshman year, kid said, “It would take me a month of working at the supermarket to pay for this one week trip. It’s just not worth it to me.” I was so happy to hear this. Kid had never thought this way, never considered the work that we put in, to pay for kid’s stuff. As it turned out, school offered a very substantial scholarship for the trip, so kid did go, but kid’s entire attitude toward spending was re-set by that one summer of working in a supermarket.