The College Visit—stuff I didn’t think to ask

Posted on March 27, 2014March 27, 2014 by Danielle

I’ll be honest—we didn’t do a ton of visits, when dear daughter was applying. As usual I had a divergent view and couldn’t really grok spending thousands of dollars to see colleges where she might not go. Plus, the few we did visit she hated. Maybe it helps with admission and maybe it doesn’t much matter, but who knows. Personally, I don’t think student guides walking backwards have all that much influence.

But now that she’s happily ensconced in a school, there are a bunch of things I wish we’d known enough to ask. I include them herewith, as they may save you some money or allow you to do better calculations.

Is there a college sponsored way for kids to get to the airport?

Some schools do offer a shuttle, but this is generally only on the day when school lets out for breaks (if at all). And getting back to school after breaks? Good luck on that one. If the school is located in one of those charming remote areas, check out how much the cab or airport express costs. Don’t faint. And while you’re doing that, check out the airfares. Add $2,000 or so to what you thought was your budget—because the airlines know when the schools let out, and price accordingly. College students have a lot of breaks.

What does it cost to stay in the dorm over breaks? Can you?

Luckily, I guess, my kid always wants to come home. But there are often special programs, internships, or even paid jobs that run over breaks. Before signing up, check out if the housing & food cost makes them worth it.

What can you do with the kid’s junk, er, room décor, over summer break?

Find out what storage costs average—many campuses have arrangements with storage locker facilities, but surprise, they aren’t cheap. Plan to rent a uHaul? Add up that cost, too.

What’s the policy if the student takes a year off, or quits or gets ill at some point in the college experience?

Right now you’re probably thinking please God not my kid. In the past 2 years I have heard 6 stories of personal acquaintances whose children did not or could not finish. Will the school automatically admit them back if in good standing? What about tuition refunds? And be aware that any loans will then kick into payment mode.

How does the health service bill? Is the local hospital in-network for your insurance?

Can you get bills to submit to your own insurance company? Can they get your kid to the emergency room or will your child have to find friends or EMTs if they need more than the health service can provide?

What can the school do if your child is in bed with the flu?

Surprisingly, at dd’s school nobody seems to have considered how a sick student will get fed. If your child is too sick to get over to the dining hall, she better have friends willing to get infected. Find out if there are beds at the health service—maybe you don’t want to be in the same room as a roommate who’s got the flu. And lock your kid in a room until the HIPAA form is signed so the health service can talk about the kid’s condition with you.

Is there an appeals process for grades that is remotely fair to the student?

This is a hard one to discover. But think for a moment about what each class is costing. Let’s say, total cost of attendance is $56,000 and child is taking 4 classes/semester. $23,000/4=$5,750. I am NOT saying that buys you a good grade, or that ANY child is entitled to a grade they did not earn. But the student ought to be entitled to a FAIR grade. Speaking from said daughter’s experience, there is going to be at least one teacher who

Can’t produce a coherent syllabus
Changes the grading system three or four times during the class
Can’t get assignments back so that the student has some idea how they’re doing and can prepare for a test
Loses assignments, doesn’t appear to read assignments carefully, yadda yadda
Doesn’t show up during posted office hours, and is late to appointments
Grades based on some airy-fairy feeling rather than the actual numbers the kid has scored

Sure, you had some terrible profs and so did I. But we probably weren’t paying the kind of bills we’re now getting, either. Thankfully, this experience was acquired via study at that other school down the road, okay, it was Swarthmore and not dd’s beloved Bryn Mawr. And I shudder to suggest that not all profs are equally (remotely) capable and that supervision of exactly what they’re up to is not as closely monitored as, say, the average schmo in an actual job, because that would probably make me sound a little resentful. Even worse if it’s a required course, a prerequisite, or something the student is profoundly interested in. In such a class with such a prof you would be better off lighting five Grover Clevelands (he’s on the $1,000 bill in case you’re never seen one)—at least it wouldn’t hurt the kid’s grade point average.

I’d ask about appeals and how many have been decided in the student’s favor. Snarky rant over.

Check out the public safety reports often posted on bulletin boards.

The ones over at Swarthmore made daughter and this parent shake in their boots. You really want to know about sexual assaults, armed robbery, etc. before you read about them in the paper. Unfortunately, some of this appears to be the new normal on some campuses (thankfully not aforesaid Bryn Mawr).

Will campus safety escort a student back to the dorm at night, do they actually show up, and how many people use it on an average weekend night?

Yeah, your kid will hate you for asking this. Until some dark and stormy night.

Is there an emergency management plan?

Not that there is ever a big snowstorm or anything, but maybe as a parent you’d be more comfortable if the inmates weren’t running the asylum. The kids are stuck there, but what about food service? Campus safety officers? Fire department, heat , electricity? If I had it to do over, I’d probably find out if a copy of a plan was available. Bryn Mawr did do a terrific job with snow and kid management. Glad it wasn’t me trying to handle both at once.

I’ve developed significantly more grey hair over the past two years my offspring has been in college and it’s not even due to her behavior! Find out all you can before you sign that acceptance letter, and you’ll sleep better for the next four years.

Updating the envelope system for financial planning

Posted on February 21, 2014February 21, 2014 by Danielle

(Photo credit: Sarabbit)

I love the old envelope system. In case your mom never taught you about this, you decide how much you’re going to spend for food, housing, clothes, etc. and you put that amount in each marked envelope every time you get paid. When the envelope is empty, you’re out of business. (Actually, my mom never taught me this—her approach was basically to just save everything, and not spend at all until they pried it loose from her fingers.) Unfortunately, just don’t use cash anymore.

Nevertheless, it works. If you are really in debt, I do recommend that you move your spending to cash as much as possible. Freeze those credit cards in a block of ice and don’t use them until they defrost (seriously). Give yourself, your partner, and your kids a specific amount of spending money and when it’s gone, it’s gone. Renew when you get paid.

But since we live in a modern plastic and virtual world, can we create a virtual envelope system? Well, sort of, and it would help many of us to better money management.

First, set up a budget. OK I can hear the groans already. Don’t make this too complicated—savings, required expenses and spending money might be enough. Most people find it easier to do a percentage of income rather than a fixed amount. That way, you know what to do with any “found” money, pay raises, or freelance income.

Next, put the required living expenses (rent, insurance, utilities, etc.) in your checking account. In general, it’s best not to carry your checkbook around with you—you probably pay these expenses at home at your desk and not having the checkbook removes some temptation. If possible, have your paycheck sent directly to this account.

Set up auto-pay and auto-withdrawals. You can either authorize the payees, such as credit card companies, to automatically withdraw from this account, or you can set up payments from the checking account to payees such as utilities. Don’t pay extra for this (some utilities are really dumb on this one).

Groceries are a special case. Certain unnamed hoity-toity supermarkets don’t accept checks anymore. If you do have any budgeting problems, it’s probably better to take out grocery (and restaurant) money in advance and put it in an actual envelope. Or use a cash card like Bluebird (transfer the right amount of cash into it each month). If all else fails and you have trouble monitoring this, designate one credit card for groceries and set up alerts to warn you when you’re getting near your pre-set goal (some allow this and will text you).

Now we get to savings. Again, you can set up auto-pay and auto-withdrawals from most investing institutions. I highly recommend NOT having your savings accounts in the same place as your checking. It’s just too easy to raid it when you need extra. For this reason I like internet based banks, credit unions that are different from where you have checking (so you have to make a special trip), or the big guys like Vanguard where you have minimum requirements.

I particularly love the automated options because it removes opportunities to make bad decisions. We all tend toward inertia. Making a decision every month to save is much more likely to fail than making a decision once, having the savings going forward happen automatically, and just getting used to those withdrawals happening.

Finally, make a list of annual or intermittent expenses (insurance, tuition, property taxes, etc.). Add up what it amounts to annually, then divide it by your pay periods. That’s what you need to put away if you don’t want to be surprised when they show up.

Don’t be afraid to create multiple accounts, say, savings for intermittent expenses, checking for regular household expenses, goal savings for vacation, retirement account, etc. Some internet savings (CapitalOne 360, for example) will allow you to designate “sub-accounts” and name them for specific purposes. You make the deposit and let them know which sub-account it should be designated as.

Mind-games? Sure, but sometimes these little tricks result in big improvements.

Hitting the re-start button

Posted on January 14, 2014January 14, 2014 by Danielle

Certain places are the end of the world. San Francisco was like that when I lived out there, and Key West (from which I just returned) appears to be another. These are places that have more than their share of burned-out cases, but also a high number of people that decided to chuck it all and start their life again.

Key West is delightful in its acceptance of eccentricity, but also in the variety of ages of those who have decided to re-start their lives in some radically new way. The first morning our waitress was in her 70s, with a sequined beret, fingerless gloves, and a few other items of clothing people 20 years younger might hesitate to wear. On the way down, the plane seat right in front of us was occupied by another femme d’un certain âge who was head to toe in red velvet, and who I later saw in the airport kissing the much younger husband she had mentioned. Gives one hope, non?

But the point of this tale is to address all the guilt and regrets I hear this time of year, along with the resolutions to do better. Sure, I’ve got a few regrets myself. Okay, maybe a hundred. What I saw while in Key West was what I think most of us who are baby boomers (or younger) have experienced—you may have to restart your life several times. There are a few people among my clients and acquaintances that knew they wanted to be lawyers at 20 and will retire from that same profession at 66. But far more common is the person who started out as an attorney and is now a shaman, the investment banker who re-trained in Chinese medicine, the corporate executive who retired early to paint, and the divorcée who started an entrepreneurial venture. Technology and the demand for skills has moved so swiftly in the past 30 years that few of us could have known what training we needed “back then”. Few of us planned to get a divorce when we said, “I do”, and all of us believed when pregnant that our children would sail brilliantly from pre-school through the Ivy League to a high paying job, a devoted partner, and a long and healthy life. If only.

Then there are the regrets about not having saved enough, made poor investment choices, and bankrolled a relative or child that turned out to be a black hole. Our brilliant children sprout terrible problems, our competent and ambitious spouse develops a chronic illness, our boss is unreasonable, our co-workers insane, our company gives us the shaft.

What can you do about that history? Truly, nothing. None of us can re-write the past, control another’s behavior, or singlehandedly manage our employer or our clients. Didn’t lose the weight you planned, didn’t meet your savings goal? Um, me too.

On several mornings in Key West, I found myself waking up depressed. I, too, wanted to chuck it all and re-start in some tropical paradise where stress was low, seafood was plentiful, and I didn’t need a winter coat ever again. Or move to Paris. Or sell the house and keep only what fit in a back pack. Or…or…

Once I had my coffee and was able to shake off the effects of the previous night’s tropical drinks, I was able to think this through.

Just about every decision we make seems right at the time. Most of us try to make good decisions based on what we know at that point, or make bad decisions because we’re just too stressed out over something else to focus down. And, every time you make a decision, you close down other possibilities. This is why so many people have great ideas for a novel, but so few of us actually write one. Artistic types in particular may get stuck on the dime because even finished works are never as good as they were in the imagination.

A trip to Key West gave me plenty of examples of the possibilities of alternatives and creating a life different from the past, and people who courageously face what it takes to make that change. We can’t change the past, but we can re-boot and aim toward a different future. As long as you’re alive, it’s possible.