As my son starts college I am reminiscent of my days long ago when I left home to embark on my first year to be on my own at college. I was the only one in my family to leave my parents’ home when it came time to move on from high school. My two older sisters both went to a local college, Hunter College. They lived at home and commuted to school using the NY City subway system. I had a choice. I had applied and made it into a local college, City University, and applied and made into the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Stony Brook was on Long Island, over an hour and a half drive from my parents’ house.
When I was of college age, my sisters had already moved out of my parents’ house. It was my sisters that convinced, or rather told me that I had to move out of the house. Stony Brook would be the choice I made and in September of 1968 my brother-in-law, sister and my parents drove me and my belongings away to college.
One main difference between when I went to college and my son going way was the way we communicated. When I was at Stony Brook, my basic way to communicate with my parents and sisters was through phone calls and an occasional letter. If my parents were lucky they heard from me once a week.
In 2011, with cell phones and the Internet, we communicate with my son almost everyday, either by phone, texting or video chats. He doesn’t have to be in his room to receive a call from us, or call us himself. He can be anywhere as long has he has his cell phone. Most of the time he calls me while walking on campus to and from places. All of us have Skype on our computers that automatically opens up when the machines are turned on. With Skype open, we can usually tell when someone is near their computer to text chat if we want to. From my side of the fence, it makes the transition from being a full time parent to an empty nester much easier. Not that we need to converse every day, but it is nice to be able to.
Most of my income while I was at college came from my allowance check that came in the mail. I needed a way to save those checks I received, so I set up a bank account with Amalgamated Bank of New York. I had never seen this bank before. It was somewhere in the city, but discovered through some brochure that I could set up a checking account by mail. This I did and until the day that I had left Stony Brook, moved to Long Island, and found a local bank to deal with my checking and savings needs I never once set foot in or saw the Amalgamated Bank of New York. Everything was done through the mail
My son has always received a two part allowance. Part of his allowance was spending money and a smaller portion was set as saving for a special occasion money. When he was younger cash was initially given to him. It was difficult to remember to supply him with his allowance, since buying things wasn’t a priority for him. I’m sure we forgot a lot. Whenever we went shopping, on trips, looking for presents for others, he rarely had his money on him, so we paid and he had to pay us back from his stash. As he got older, it became easier to set up a virtual bank account. Using the program Quicken, I set up his allowance. Each month it automatically added money to his spending and savings accounts. Any time he wanted to buy something we would front the money and he had to deduct it on Quicken. He always knew how much money he had to spend and kept within his limit when buying things. When he graduated high school he was ready for the real thing. We set up a joint checking and savings account, he got a debit card, and now could spend all his money on his own. My bank account auto deposits his allowance into his checking and savings account and he still keeps Quicken records to keep track of what he spends. If he needs money from us or has to pay us money for something, it is all done electronically through our bank accounts. He has discovered that even though he’s been doing this since he was younger that he is a lot more thoughtful in his spending now that it is his own real money being transacted.
In some respects he is doing with his bank what I did in my college days. The difference is that I used snail mail to accomplish my tasks and he uses electronic mail. The other difference is that he’s actually seen the bank that his bank transactions go through.
As I talk to him more, I also discovered that experiences that I remember as a first year college student have similarities to what he is experiencing. But that is for another time to write about.
