Philliefan33
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2014
- Messages
- 1,677
….To me, paying for everything does not give them the opportunity to learn about money. I was always there if they got into trouble financially, but they all learned about financial responsibilities...which is not often taught in school.
Yes, it’s important that we teach financial responsibilities, but we started that long before college. Kids started getting an allowance in 1st grade. We made them put 10% into the piggy bank, and when it added up to a few dollars we took them to the bank to deposit into their passbook savings account. They might use their money to buy some small doodad that we wouldn’t. (Allowance was small — $1/week in 1st grade, $2/week in 2nd grade, etc
Allowance increased to about $10/week by sixth grade or so. They could earn more by doing extra jobs around the house like mowing the lawn, cleaning the house (our cleaning lady had moved away) or cleaning windows. 10% rule still applied. They used their money to go to movies with friends or buy doodads.
Next step was to get them a pre-paid credit card that I could reload instantly online. This have me some peace of mind that I could fund an emergency (car breaks down and they need $to get home, etc) and we introduced the concept of budgets. Instead of taking them shopping for needed clothes and paying, I would put money on their card and let them do the paying. (Suddenly, a $50 pair of jeans looked just as good as the $85 pair of jeans).
They each got a part-time job at the grocery store when they were 15/16 and kept that job through HS and the first couple of summers home from college. Money was used for socializing or saved for college book expenses.
We taught the girls about money and budgets when the amounts were dollars, tens of dollars, and a $109 paycheck. Tuition/room/board at college was at least $16K per semester for the sixteen checks we wrote. If a kid doesn’t already have a sense of the value of money, college tuition is just numbers.
There’s no way my daughters could have worked enough to pay $32K per year for college on their own. We were able to pay for them. Why would we saddle them with outrageous debt, or otherwise complicate their undergrad years just to prove a point?