Father: “What would you ideally have to pay for your studying children for your studying children? Studying our three living children, their mother and I are divorced. We have saved for their studies, so that they don’t have to borrow. In addition, we pay something on fixed costs. Our children work in addition to their studies to three days a week to pay for the rest, they never get rid of their parents. Foreign study exchanges do we do our children short by not being able to offer them such opportunities? ”
Driving lessons are part of it
Ad Kil: “I use the rule: is the contribution essential or is it a gift? A driver’s license is actually part of it. See it as getting swimming diplomas, nowadays also very expensive. Young people must be able to drive if their work is part of their visitors. These are too large amounts to gather themselves as a student.
“Paying study trips is more nuanced. Parents should only do that if such a journey is functional and is in relation to the training, for example with an internationally oriented study. Then it adds something. If children just want to backpack, or want to do a cocktail course in Greece, you might give them a suitcase and a short trousers.”
“At the time, you started saving in honor and ability and with the knowledge of the time. Explain which choices you and their mother have made at the time, can yield a nice educational conversation.
“Moreover, I would be careful with looking at what other parents do. Parents also whip each other. Some young people get a mini for their eighteenth birthday because they ‘need’, what does it end?”
Facilitate effort
Leo Molenaar: “Your children apparently have friends with prosperous parents, because I see many students who do not get any financial help from home. It is already very special that your children do not have to borrow.
“I would wonder: when is it enough? Did you save for driving lessons, there might have been something else that you had awarded your children. There are parents who are their children to one Summer Course send to Harvard. Whether that is better for the child himself is questionable. If there are many beautiful pluses on a CV that are funded by the parents, that is not always an advantage.
“It is more valuable that a character is growing due to challenges. What matters is the personal effort that young people make. Someone who makes a lot of effort to achieve something is a thousand times more interesting than someone for whom everything is paid for. If your children pay those lessons or that course on their own, a valuable independence arises that future employers really pay attention to.
“Incidentally, almost every study institution nowadays has affordable exchanges with abroad. At the university, these are the Erasmus exchanges for which you get a grant.
“Much more valuable than paying for everything is to talk to your children about their ambitions, and what their own responsibility they have in it. Tell them what considerations you and your ex-partner had about savings policy at the time. This is how they see how choices are made in life.”
Ad Kil is a pedagogue and professor of Business Research at Nyenrode Business University. He is a co-author of The golden backpack. Handbook for wealthy families. Leo Molenaar is a dean at the Murmellius Gymnasium Alkmaar, university professor of Study & Career and Organizer of the Tussenjaartbeurs.
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