Hi fellow-parents,
my daughter starts as a freshman this fall.
living on campus.
tuition, room, board, fees (billed by the university) will be covered 20:40:40 student loans:mom:dad
It's the "everything else" I'm not clear on: dorm stuff, computer, cell phone, "personal", books, transport (minimal), entertainment, snacks, clothes, you name it, etc.)
when I was in college the general rule of thumb was "parents pay tuition room and board, student pays "everything else"". that worked out really horribly for me, to be honest, because I spent so much time working & getting distracted by the things I encountered while working (people, substances). plus working was a lot easier than studying... So I'm definitely leary of the distraction factor of working.
My daughter has been offered federal work study at $2200/year. which probably means 10h/wk for most of the semester. A mid-20s friend of mine told me she should skip the workstudy and focus on her GPA because that will be a bigger pay-off on keeping her scholarships (which are GPA dependent), getting more scholarships, and longer-term having more accomplished and therefore getting better funding for grad school. this is a line of thinking I definitely never went down before, so I don't know what to think.
my questions are:
what rule-of-thumb have you used for your student and how did it work out?
what do you think of my friend's point about work study?
how much did "everything else" actually run? (urban school, 1h from home)
my daughter is (at the moment) sensible and pretty frugal, she spent her gap year working for $12/hr, so she's got that "work" experience behind her.
any advice & perspective would be appreciated.
Thanks
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