Canadian Personal Finance Blog

I get hundreds of spam and phishing e-mails at work, and for the e-mail account I use for this blog I get thousands of offers, spam, and phishing e-mails, and I have seen pretty much every one that has been sent (although I still wonder why only my girlfriend worries about the size of my penis, but that is for another post), so someone ignoring an e-mail normally wouldn’t cause me to write a post about it, but, sometimes there is an e-mail you should do something about.

My oldest, who is going to University in the fall got an e-mail last week, that she didn’t act on, and it may end up costing me (potentially) a large sum of money.

What Teenager Doesn’t Check Their E-mail?

That’s a darn good question, and the cost of it, is about 1/2 the cost of lodgings at University next year (and more) from what I can estimate, thanks to one of my children not checking her e-mail in the past 2 weeks or so (or at least not checking this e-mail in specific).

Evidently the University she is planning to attend this fall (if she passes all of her courses in high school) has a large 1st year class arriving in this coming academic year, so the residence board is worried they will not have enough rooms for all of the students who might want to live in Residence, thus they have devised a brilliant plan (IMHO) to deal with this.

One of their existing residence building has fairly large single rooms, so what the school will be doing is putting Bunk Beds into these larger rooms so two students can sleep and live where one would have been previously, which should help alleviate some of the over crowding problem.

The University’s housing folks are smart enough that they could simply force this on to their incoming first year students but that might cause some hard feelings, so instead they turned this problem into an opportunity so they devised a deal to make this an attractive choice, instead of a stop gap fix to their over crowding problem. The solution is ingenious, they sent out an e-mail to students going into first year that made the following offer:

1. Any first year student who volunteers for one of these bunk bed rooms, would only have to pay 1/2 of the normal residence lodging fees (excluding food). That in itself makes it a very attractive deal, but they weren’t finished.
2. In addition any student who is in one of these rooms, gets a free laptop computer and the residence will be set up with wireless Internet, due to the rooms being crowded and maybe not having enough space to study or work. There will be study areas set up to allow for these students to have  a work place somewhere near their rooms.

Great deal, don’t you think? I thought so when my oldest told my wife and I about it on Monday night, after my daughter finally checked her e-mail, however, the deal had been sent out on the previous Thursday and evidently by Friday morning all the spots and volunteers needed had been filled, so we missed out on this deal.

Did we really lose all that money? Not really, but it does go to show that sometimes you should check your e-mail a little more often than once every 2 weeks or so. Lessons we learn in life are never easy, and they always seem to have a large monetary value of some kind, unfortunately.

This weekend we finally tried out the Rogers Pay Per View system (to watch Michael Clayton, which I’d seen 8/9 of on an airplane but never saw the ending), and it worked just fine. I was impressed by the fact that I actually can watch it again for 48 hours (it cost $5.99).  We got this digital box a year ago, when Rogers effectively gave it to us for free (or 50 cents more a month), and it has been quite good and we have used it to my satisfaction.

Comparing the pay per view system to Blockbuster or another video store, I think this service seems fine. Was it worth $5.99 for the movie, this time yes, but I don’t think I’ll end up using it a lot. I still get most of my movies from the Ottawa public library, but I may rent one more movie in the next little while, but not too many more, I just don’t see the value, if I can get the movie for free from the Library.

University Costs and So It Begins

As my daughter has made a choice about which University to attend, now I must start spending money. I had to put down a deposit on a residence room, and all the fees I had to pay previously just to apply to the University, to have the privilege to send them more money later.

I will have to make a run to the school, which is going to cost enough, so my daughter can see the campus before she starts in September.

I have created a new category in Quicken to track all these expenses. Why? I am a masochist at heart, I guess.

Is there a right way to deal with the question of whether a parent should pay for a child’s post secondary education or whether the child should be left to pay for a University Education (and left with a large debt load in student loans)?

I think that is a pedagogical question since most of the times the parents financial situation is what dictates how much parents can help their children who want to get a post secondary education. I find it rare that parents who can help their children with their post secondary education, don’t help out in some fashion or another. I do know of some children who have refused help from their parents, out of pride or other reasons, but that is a rarity as well.

Some of the comments I have received have been very interesting, and I want to thank all of my reader’s who contributed (and those who de-lurked for me as well).

• A large number of comments agreed with my opening statement that it is very rare that parents who can help, choose not to help out their children who choose to try to get a University Education, it usually comes down to whether the parent is in a position to help or not.
• Michael James commented:
  

  I plan to pay for the basic necessities for my kids initially, and am hoping that they earn enough to take over by the end. I’m not paying for any extras, though. Meal plan, residence, books, and tuition are necessities.

  I think that point of view is a healthy view point, and fair. The extras he comments on, I think are part of the “College Lifestyle”, but then again, should a parent be expected to pay for them?

• Trent commented:
  

  And I would say emphatically, if the student in question never had a job during high school, then I think you would be doing a great disservice to them by allowing them to wait until they graduate college before punching their first clock.

  Which is very much the “Christian Work Ethic” espoused by many parents and grandparents. I think I agree with that comment as well.

  As a personal aside, I worked delivering Telephone Books one summer, loading trucks another summer and had a paper route from age 13, so on those days at University when I thought, I am going to chuck this whole thing and get a “real” job, I just remembered heaving bundles of Penthouse into the back of Grumman delivery trucks in 30 Celsius heat, and it was amazing how well it motivated me.

• Nerd Money Commented:
  

  I think one possible solution in terms of funding is that you loan out any funds you’ve set aside for their education. Set it up like a government funded loan where there’s no interest while they’re in school and then a modest interest rate payable to “The Bank of Mom and Dad” six months after graduation.

  Interesting concept, that I don’t know if I agree, but it is another way to teach the value of the money spent on the education (remember the infamous Singing Horse parable for possible pay back solutions).

• Steward’s of Wealth had another perspective:
  

  We don’t have kids. But one thing that we will teach them is how money works. One of our goals is to teach them how to invest. Hopefully, by the time they get to college, they’ll already have assets paying for tuition.

  Didn’t really say if they were going to help or not, and unless my kids find a penny stock to invest their funds, it’s less likely they’ll be able to pay off their tuition, but a worthwhile learning experience, although what happens if they invest badly (like I would have)?

• Nancy (aka Money Coach)’s comments really hit home for me:
  

  I was driven, got the A’s but it wasn’t nearly the experience it could have been if I had been funded. Then I graduated with a debt that took 10 long years to pay off, and significantly hampered my ability to get ahead (and most readers know the effect of compound interest = opportunity cost for me).

  I read that and understand more what the costs of Student Loans can do to newly graduated students.

• Amy (my de-lurker) comments were again very good:
  

  I graduated with a BA in 2003 with very little debt. I worked like crazy every summer (maybe taking 2-3 days for a camping excursion with friends every summer but that was it). I also worked most Saturdays during the school year. Seeing as I attended a Christian university here in Ontario, my earnings didn’t stretch as far as I would have liked, so I applied for DadSAP:) My parents were in a position to help me out, and I’m very grateful for that. I gave all I could towards my education and my parents paid the rest.

  DadSAP == The Bank of Mom and Dad, but it’s the same idea. Any child who works hard and realizes that as the oldest they need to help their parents because their brothers and sisters will want help too, is ok by me!

• Another interesting comment I got from an acquaintance who has many kids (more than 7 I believe) who told her kids, “You are going to University, Your Parents aren’t going to be able to Help, but You are going”. I think if kids are aware of the ground rules early, they are more likely to figure out what they need to do early on as well.

Thanks to all commenters and readers, this was an excellent bit of research for me to understand how other folks view this dilemma. I am lucky to have gotten my scholastic ride for free (as it were), and hope to help my kids as much we can.