Written when my oldest daughter started University. Her sisters were still in High School, so I was just learning about University Costs.
Expenses of School
Today is back to school for pretty much everyone in my house, and that means the ensuing spending of money on a thousand small things that adds up to a huge bill at the end of the month under the category of Education in my Quicken. With the added excitement of University costs (yes you should be putting money in an accredited RESP, or education savings plan) should make for an interesting end of September.
Quick Impressions of University
- HP Printers seem to be the printer of choice in my daughter’s dorm (she also has a printer/scanner system). The number of Hewlett-Packard boxes I saw wander up the staircases on Monday, suggests HP is doing quite well in the area of printers.
- HP computers also seemed to be leading the way in dorm rooms (in my very unscientific sample), however my daughter’s roommate had the other choice I was thinking of, and that was the Mac Powerbook. I like them, and they are “chic” technology wise (being a UNIX based OS and such). Didn’t wander down to my Alma Mater to see what was in the dorm rooms at the University of Waterloo, my guess is a more “geek” oriented computer line up.
- American Eagle seems to be the clothing of choice, for now.
- People show up mid-day to drop off their kids and wonder why there is a traffic jam all the way down University avenue all the way out to Highway 85. My father-in-law and I showed up at 9:30 AM got all registration done and had my daughter out for lunch by 11:00 AM.
- Kitchener has a lot of brew pubs.
- Rogers Cell phone system on line is a piece of poo poo. If you attempt to move you Pay per use phone using their on line system, you get 3 pages of JAVA exceptions and the phone number is never changed. The phone based system is not good either, because it won’t let you call from your phone to do this (the phone you are trying to move), even though you can get to it on the menu. The “oral translation” software does not understand WATERLOO, when you say that as the city you want to transfer the phone to, it keeps saying, “You said WALKERTON is that correct?”. We finally managed to do something, we’ll see if it is correct or not later.
- People move a lot of crap to University, only to throw it out (witness the number of Dead TVs and sofas by the curb in Waterloo).
- Labour Day gas costs were nuts
Sorry for the frenetic theme today, but I only got home last night and didn’t have my article ready ’til this morning!
Any other stories of University beginnings appreciated.
Other Back to School Thoughts?
- The Business of University Fees talks about how you should look very closely at all the fees you child might pay at school. Many of these fees are refundable, think about doing that.
- Back To School and RESP Time this is when to think about it. If your kids aren’t at University, do they have an RESP?
- High Tech Hand Me Downs & Back to School another area of spending. Are you buying new computers or handing them down?
- You think you don’t need an RESP ? Maybe check out that page for some hints on how much it can help.
- Student High Tech Hygiene is another important topic. If their computers are full of viruses and malware, what are you going to do about it.
