I had a sizable sum from a car accident for college, which we put into an account in my mom’s name. Each semester I sat down with my parents and discussed tuition costs, and she wrote a check. Any day-to-day expenses had to come from my job… I argued about it then, but now I realize what a smart decision they made!

That way you could help teach them a whole slew of money management skills at the same time and still be helping them afford college.

I could argue that students should be prepared before college and be educated to budget funds for books, food, tuition, medical. I hope to teach my children the benefits of fiscal responsibility, tithing, budgeting, and saving. Will it all stick? I hope, but giving a child $10k upfront might be asking for trouble.

Attack the root of the problem first, rather than treating the symptoms and consequences of it.

I would personally, thinking about it, allocate the funds by semester allott for enough to pay for that months financial burden for school and enough to secure the needs.

Truth is, if my brother and I had direct access to our money, we’d probably have blown it. (He definitely would have – he’s got some money-eating hobbies, and I just took up scuba diving!) As it is, this way, we learn to budget and keep track of where our money is going. (And I have to save up to buy scuba equipment )

My first roommate’s parents gave each of their children a certain amount of money (I don’t remember how much) to do, in what is as close to a quote as I can remember, “get married, go to college, buy a Corvette, or whatever” they wanted to do. Luckily, all their children are responsible, though my roomie DID buy a motorcycle (used, at least – and her mom told her it was too much bike for her!).

So it all depends on how well you think your kid(s) will do with oodles of money – though I personally vote for allocation, as I think 95% of the people who are heading off to college for the first time have their heads up their butts in regards to personal finance.

In the end, it’s really what the kid can do, mixed a bit with the parents. My parents had my college savings (IE, anything I’d saved while being a kid) in UGMA accounts. I never asked for control over them. I trusted my parents to handle them appropriately, and I was kept generally informed of their status. Dad paid my college bills and let me know what I was personally responsible for as well (IE, from summer jobs, and I always had a campus job). When I was way over the age of majority, Dad finally transferred them completely over to me. One, I actually asked him to keep until I got married (although the company was a bit putout when I said I was transferring it finally to my own name, and it was 8 years late; they still did it). [Yes, I did so well that some of my college savings paid for my wedding! Some more of it has never been touched and hovers around $8000 these days....] Anyway, my point is that I managed my money just fine, but left it in the hands of my parents to dole out appropriately for college. Mainly because it was easier–I didn’t have to track the investments, and Dad just forwarded the annual statements to me for taxes.

On the other hand, my brother spent money like water. If he had had full control of all of his money, it would have been gone in a year, too.

I agree this is a tremendous blessing, and I’d hate to see the money squandered when the return on a college education will pay dividends for years to come in terms of a higher salary, more employment opportunities, etc.

The next year, we tried to be smarter. She went away to school for the year. We allotted her a certain amount of money each month, we “paid” it into her checking account like a paycheck. She didn’t work, she just went to school. And she really noticed this, she was calling to ask for more money all the time.

It was frustrating, we did that for two years until she decided that she didn’t want to continue with school

I don’t know how we could have done it differently, but for her–not having to work for her college education at all or contribute anything to it made her apathetic to college as a whole. She’s now 22 and living off her investment money, supporting her deadbeat non-working boyfriend as well.