Money Woes

Not us per se. Dan. This last year he has shared a three bedroom apt with a slew of other students. Officially it was six ppl but my guess is on any given night there were 8 or 9 people. Dan is the oldest, found the place and took care to get the rent in, pay utilities, etc. The other kids were flaky for the most part. He is not comfortable as a disciplinarian or 'heavy'. In fact, one of the guys borrowed over $1000 from him pretty early on and left before the lease was up shorting out two months of rent plus what he already owed Dan. Another guy is a few months in arrears although it is supposedly coming next week when the student loans come in.

Dan has learned his lesson in that he now seems to get it that you don't loan money you can't easily kiss goodbye. "Neither borrower nor lender be", the motto at Bob's Bank (thanks, Garrison.)

Plus in general Dan is not a good money manager. Last time he was here Andrew took time to make him learn Quicken. So now he can keep better records. But Andrew and I are paying for everything and it's an expensive place. There is basically no way Dan could hold down a job and go to this school full time. Last week alone he spent over 50 hrs of active studio time and that is just for one class (out of two).

And then he totaled his car. We aren't replacing it. That's going to make things tougher for him but cheaper for all of us. He and his friend have found a cheaper one bdrm apt closer to the two campuses. Dan has a bike and his friend has a car and Dan can pitch in for gas when they do stuff together. (Brooks tells students they need a car because they are lugging big equipment around all over for assignments.)

I end up as intermediary between father and son. Son hates asking for money and father doesn't get that son can't live within a budget. When Andrew was a student, apparently he tracked every penny he spent! I feel that I wasn't very good at teaching responsible money handling to either kid, although Ian seems to manage okay. (Mind you, he's held down a job for over two years. He is quitting now because his school work load will get heavy in a few weeks.)