Do You Actually Know What Your Kids Are Costing You?
The Quiet House | Part 1 of 4
Here's a question most parents haven't sat down and actually answered.
How much are your kids costing you right now?
Not a rough estimate. Not tuition and room and board and calling it done. The real number, including everything that quietly flows out of your accounts on their behalf every single month.
Most people, when they actually look, are surprised by what they find.
The Obvious Stuff Is Just the Beginning
Tuition gets all the attention because it's the big number. It shows up on a bill, it has a due date, it's hard to ignore.
But tuition is just the beginning of what most parents are actually spending.
There's the credit card your kid has access to for emergencies, which turns out to cover a pretty expansive definition of emergency. There's the money you put on their account for food or incidentals that gets replenished more often than you expected. There's the car insurance that's still in your name. The phone plan. The occasional Venmo transfer when things get tight at the end of the month.
None of these feel like a lot on their own. Together they add up to something meaningful.
Why This Matters More Than You Think
I'm not bringing this up to make anyone feel bad about helping their kids. Supporting your children through college is one of the most loving things you can do and most parents don't regret a dollar of it.
But here's the thing. If you don't know what you're actually spending, you can't make an informed decision about it.
You might be spending more than you realize and more than you actually need to be. Or you might look at the number and decide it's completely worth it and you'd do it all over again. Both of those are valid outcomes. But you can only get there if you actually look.
And right now, before the drop-off chaos hits and the school year fully kicks in, is actually the perfect time to do that.
The Deeper Question Underneath This One
When I have this conversation with clients, there's usually a bigger question underneath the spending question.
It's something like: now that the kids are a little more independent, what does our financial picture actually look like? What do we have, what are we spending, and what should we be doing differently?
That's a really good question to be asking right now. And the spending audit is actually a great place to start because it gives you a clear, honest baseline to work from.
You can't plan for the next chapter without knowing what the current chapter actually costs.
A Simple Way to Start
You don't need a complicated system for this. Spend an hour going back through the last three months of bank and credit card statements with your kid in mind.
Look for every transaction that wouldn't exist if they weren't in college. The tuition payments, yes, but also the smaller stuff. The Venmo transfers. The charges on the card they have access to. The subscriptions still in your name that they use.
Add it up. That's your number.
Then ask yourself whether that number is what you expected, whether it feels right, and whether there are any adjustments worth making going forward.
That's really all there is to it.
What We See at The 611 Group
This exercise almost always surfaces something useful. Sometimes it's a number that's bigger than expected and leads to a conversation about what support actually looks like going forward. Sometimes it's smaller than people feared and gives them confidence that they have more breathing room than they thought.
Either way, knowing the real number is always better than guessing. And it's usually the first step toward a more intentional conversation about what this next season gets to look like financially.
A Final Thought
Summer is winding down. The drop-off is coming. And this little window right now, before the emotion of it all hits, is actually a great time to take a clear-eyed look at what things really cost and what you want to do with the picture going forward.
If you'd like help thinking through what this next season looks like for your finances, that's exactly the kind of conversation we love having.
Willie Schuette
The 611 Group Wealth Advisors