As part of my internship at Xanga, I worked on a site called Dollarish, which is kind of a catch-all personal finance and job blog geared towards high school students and college students. Since I left, they’ve opened up an advice section of the site where there have been some good questions and some horrible ones. There was one this week that I just couldn’t leave alone.

What do you think an adequate allowance is for a college student that isn’t able to get a part time job?

Wanna know what my college allowance was? Zip, zero, nada, nothing. As a kid and a teenager, I didn’t get an allowance either. I pretty much just hoarded any money given to me for holidays and birthdays and used that over the course of the year. I had friends who would ask their parents for a $20 bill when they wanted to go to the movies. I asked my parents once for that because I didn’t have enough money myself, and I still remember that day. I was extremely embarrassed to ask them for it, even though they didn’t act like it a big deal. Since then, I haven’t remember asking my parents for money for anything. My parents buy me stuff sometimes, but even now I go back and forth on whether getting the item (generally clothing) is really worth the price, whether I think they can spend the money, etc, and I put back about 90% of what they offer to get me. I’m even like that with my own money and my boyfriend laughs at me for it: I look at an item, look again, think about getting it, work out how I can afford it, think maybe not, then think about getting it, then I almost buy it but ultimately put it back. When I write this out, it’s pretty ridiculous, but hey, it’s cheap.

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