Calling on the bank of mum and dad

In retrospect, the image seems a strange one. Stranded the other side of the Atlantic with quite literally no money. Having, as I thought, diligently paid my credit card bills by cheque, it soon became clear that not one of my cheques had reached the card company, and my credit card had been stopped. It was around 7pm US time and I was stood face to face with a youth hostel worker in New York, in stalemate. Obviously, at a mere $42, (and I’m sure they get despairing disorganized travelers all the time) there was no way I was going to get past this point without finding the money somehow.

I glanced at my watch- I just had to survive another 33 hours until my flight. How could I get through this?

At that point I realized just how complex my relationship with Bank of Mum and Dad was. In retrospect I can’t believe that I even considered making my last night in New York Survival Course 101, quite simply because I didn’t want my parents to think I’d messed up. After all, if I’d just been that little more organized before I left in setting up a direct debit for my credit card, I wouldn’t be in this position. And the last people I actually wanted to hear that from were my parents.

The Department for Education and Skills recently conducted a survey on the attitudes of 18 to 24-year-olds towards money. And surprise surprise, more than a quarter of them admitted they would not tell their parents if they were overdrawn, and another one in five admitted they would not tell them if they had a credit card.

"We students want to be perceived as models of financial rectitude. Our parents, however, just want us to be OK"

But there are problems both sides to the coin. Almost half of all parents said that they did not want to speak to their child about money as they did not want to sound like a nag, and an astonishing 22% believed their child didn’t feel money was important. Now correct me if I am wrong, but I can’t think of a single friend that doesn’t think money is important, let alone 22% of them.

It seems there is a dilemma here. We students (for the most part) want to be perceived as models of financial rectitude by our parents. Our parents however, (for the most part) just want us to be OK, and for us to be just a little aware of how our actions now can impact our life later on. In my case, which may be an extreme one, when I later explained to them (somewhat hyperbolically) ‘I’d rather sleep on a doorstep in New York than admit to you that I could have managed things better’, my parents were horrified. For them, $40 was nothing to make sure I was OK. The fact that I thought I was doing the right thing by sleeping in a doorway did nothing to restore their faith in me, but as far as I was concerned, at least I got the issues out in the open.

I’m sure my parents did everything they could to ensure I was financially organized, but being a student is about learning common sense with money. I did not understand much about how I should be managing my money until I was already in a mess. And the tangles were far too easy to come by. With the big step of leaving home, making new friends, starting a new degree and joining new clubs and teams, money all of a sudden takes a backseat to all the other issues and relationships you have to manage. So money quickly runs out, and at the time when you really need it most.

For those who are interested, I really did manage to make it from New York City to JFK 33 hours later on three bucks. And the funny thing was, I even got some memorable experiences on the way; from being taken out to lunch by a New York city cop, to a suitcase too heavy to carry with wheels that had literally dropped off from the heat of the sun. But I guess making mistakes is what being a student is all about, right?

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