2004 Volvo XC70--Yay or Nay??

[sheilaincali]

DH and I are shopping for a car for DS right now. It will be affordable and most likely older (but in good condition). We are friends with a mechanic/service station that sells cars as well. They are on the hunt for me. We won't make DS pay for the car but I will ask him to pay for his gas.

DS works for me 3 days a week in the summer and a couple of afternoons a week during the school year. It just depends on his schedule.  He is open enrolled to his school so I have been having to leave work and go and pick him up every day that he doesn't have a practice or meeting after school.

On a typical day he starts at 7am with morning practice for either Robotics or Knowledge Bowl and finishes up at 5pm when afternoon practice/meetings end. The days he doesn't have practice after school will be coming to work with me and working for a couple of hours.

Slightly OT-  we had planned on paying for 100% of his college but DH and I discussed it (based on some of the threads here) and talked to DS and have decided that he should contribute $2,000 per year to his tuition. It's not a lot but it's enough that he has to save up and he has some investment into his college degree. DS is completely cool with the idea and doesn't seem to have an issue with it. He started saving this summer and already has $800 saved up. He will be a junior in HS this fall.

[Deleted]

Aug 19, 2014 15:27:22 GMT -5 sheilaincali said:

DH and I are shopping for a car for DS right now. It will be affordable and most likely older (but in good condition). We are friends with a mechanic/service station that sells cars as well. They are on the hunt for me. We won't make DS pay for the car but I will ask him to pay for his gas.

DS works for me 3 days a week in the summer and a couple of afternoons a week during the school year. It just depends on his schedule.  He is open enrolled to his school so I have been having to leave work and go and pick him up every day that he doesn't have a practice or meeting after school.

On a typical day he starts at 7am with morning practice for either Robotics or Knowledge Bowl and finishes up at 5pm when afternoon practice/meetings end. The days he doesn't have practice after school will be coming to work with me and working for a couple of hours.

Slightly OT-  we had planned on paying for 100% of his college but DH and I discussed it (based on some of the threads here) and talked to DS and have decided that he should contribute $2,000 per year to his tuition. It's not a lot but it's enough that he has to save up and he has some investment into his college degree. DS is completely cool with the idea and doesn't seem to have an issue with it. He started saving this summer and already has $800 saved up. He will be a junior in HS this fall.

can he use a Stafford Loan to cover his $2000?

[sheilaincali]

Singlemom- he can use whatever he wants so long as it's not a student loan he has to pay back. The school offers a $2000 "award" (scholarship) if he graduates in the top 1/3 or something of his class. I would accept that. 

We have discussed student loans at great length at our house. I'm ok with him taking out loans if he wants to be a doctor or a lawyer but for his undergraduate degree I'd like him to graduate student loan free. My husband and I can afford to pay the estimated $12,000 a year cost for him to go to college (that's tuition, fees and room and board for the University he wants to attend). We have told him this and we have also told him that we would like him to contribute to his education because I think that will help him take it more seriously.

He is completely fine with this plan. My kid is a very serious person and has a 10 year plan that hasn't changed in the past few years. He knows where he wants to go, what he wants to major in, what classes he needs to take in high school, etc. This is not us pushing him it's all him. His friends are just as serious as he is.

DS- studied abroad in Germany this summer and worked for me part time. In his free time he started writing computer code for his robot (school thing).

L- has been attending a Duke University sponsored summer camp for the past few years. It's a month long program. This year I think they studied AI. Was also a counselor at the boy scout camp

J- did his 2nd summer at Russian Language Immersion camp

G- attended a month long theology camp and wrote several papers on his experiences there.

[zibazinski]