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Money, College, and High School Sports

I have a daughter who is a freshman at George Washington University. She has been in school for about 59 days now. For the last two weeks, we have gotten several appeals for more money on her "GWorld" spending card so that she can "eat."

When she started school, her GWorld was funded with $1,000 and her Dining Dollars account was given $700. That's $1,700 to spend on food and sundries. After 59 days of school, and an infusion of $200, she is down to about $300 overall.

We are able to get the transaction breakdown of her spending, which allowed me to come up with some metrics.

Being female, she needs makeup and other girl things from a pharmacy store like CVS. To that, she spent $438, or roughly $7.42 per day.

Being a hungry college kid, she spends most of her food money on carbohydrates and fast food from 7-11. To that, she has spent $745 or roughly $12.63 per day. Recently she discovered the magical elixer of caffeine, which comes in nifty packaging from Starbucks.

$12.63 is pretty high for food. You can get the NutriSystem delivered to your door for 28 days for just $8.33 per day [1]. You could eat relatively good frozen dinners (college kids do have Microwave ovens) for $3.50 each [2], or about $10.50 per day.

This is her first experience with being entirely on her own. During the summer she had a job and was paid a good amount of money, probaby about $2,000. Nearly all of that was spent by the end of summer, 43% of which was spent on fast food from Wendys, Jack In The Box, and other restaurants.

To what do we owe this apparently lack of feduciary responsibility? Of all things, I blame High School sports. My daughter was an athletics student and spent most of her non-school time engaged in sports. As a result of such an experience, she never had to be responsible with money because her parents were always there to "do it for me." As she did more sports, more so did the athletics programs encourage her to continue along this path, thus perpetuating the athlete cycle.

I could blame me, her parent, but I've lectured her so many times on being more responsible with money. In the end, when it comes to money, only life experience can teach us how to manage it better. Maybe $12.63 per day for food isn't so bad, just a little on the rich side, but not so bad given the location of her school.

[1] NutriSystem Pricing

[2] Vons - Hc Naturally Gourmet Light Pumpkin Squash Ravioli - 9.2 Oz - $3.29

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