You've seen the HGTV show "Clean House"? Sunday afternoon at Hale Nords was "Financial Clean House" for our college-bound kid.
She finally has Quicken Basics loaded on her Mac (it's not a very powerful program) so she was ready to budget. She projected last year's spending onto this year's college freshman year and figured out what would change. She finally straightened out her confusion on how to use some categories and how to track her various spending accounts.
When she went through all the categories, she added up her spending. It was a thing of joy to see the look on her face when she realized that NROTC will eventually pay her a $250/month stipend... and she's planning to spend $260/month. But she has enough slack in her budget that she can solve her own problems.
Next was building an accounts list along with all the account numbers, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and other details. She even dug out her EE bonds and built the inventory. (One of them, a $100 Grandma gift when she was born, has yielded 5.4% APY for nearly 18 years.) By the time she goes to college she'll have enough job savings (and perhaps graduation gifts) to start a NFCU or PenFed CD. She thinks it's cool to build a ladder, while I think it's cool to lock the money up in longer-term commitments where it's not so easy to spend.
Finally she cleaned out her financial file folders and stashed them in a Rubbermaid container. Eventually all her stuff will be containerized for long-term storage and we'll get the bedroom & hall closet back...
Then we went surfing. She's beginning to realize that she's not going to be doing much of that in a few months.
139 days to go.
She finally has Quicken Basics loaded on her Mac (it's not a very powerful program) so she was ready to budget. She projected last year's spending onto this year's college freshman year and figured out what would change. She finally straightened out her confusion on how to use some categories and how to track her various spending accounts.
When she went through all the categories, she added up her spending. It was a thing of joy to see the look on her face when she realized that NROTC will eventually pay her a $250/month stipend... and she's planning to spend $260/month. But she has enough slack in her budget that she can solve her own problems.
Next was building an accounts list along with all the account numbers, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and other details. She even dug out her EE bonds and built the inventory. (One of them, a $100 Grandma gift when she was born, has yielded 5.4% APY for nearly 18 years.) By the time she goes to college she'll have enough job savings (and perhaps graduation gifts) to start a NFCU or PenFed CD. She thinks it's cool to build a ladder, while I think it's cool to lock the money up in longer-term commitments where it's not so easy to spend.
Finally she cleaned out her financial file folders and stashed them in a Rubbermaid container. Eventually all her stuff will be containerized for long-term storage and we'll get the bedroom & hall closet back...
Then we went surfing. She's beginning to realize that she's not going to be doing much of that in a few months.
139 days to go.
