If you’ve got a child between the ages of 12 and 26, you know how difficult it can be to motivate him or her to want to apply for college scholarships.
Try this entertaining strategy, one that other parents are using with great success.
1. Give your son a meager allowance.
Make sure it’s just barely enough to cover his bare minimum life expenses. Set up an automatic bank transfer so that this amount goes into his bank account reliably, every two weeks.
2. List for your son all the purchases this money will have to cover.
“Son, we’ll expect you to use this allowance money to buy all your own school lunches, cell phone service, clothes, shoes, gas, football fees, school activities, and all your personal spending.” Add anything else to this list you can think of.
3. Then, wait for an emergency.
Teenage son: “Mom! Prom tickets are only available through Friday, and I forgot to buy mine! Can you please lend me $150 until the 15th?”
Mom: “Oh no! You’re out of money and can’t afford prom tickets? That’s awful! Emily will be so disappointed if you have to call off prom. I’d say this calls for breaking into your emergency fund!”
Teenage son: “Mom, I, uh—I don’t have an emergency fund. I haven’t saved up for that yet. Could you please just lend me $150? Just until the 15th?”
Mom (genuinely sad for him and wanting to help): “Well, we don’t like debt in this family—but how about this? I’ll pay you $50 for every scholarship application you fill out in a quality manner. Do you think you could fill out three scholarship applications by Friday? I bet you could!”
4. Consider doing this starting soon after your child finishes 9th grade.
If you do so, you’ll allow your son (or daughter) to learn valuable life skills that will pay off for decades into the future. You’ll free yourself from having to respond to whiny requests for money every day, because your reply to every request will be, “Sure! Sounds fun! If you’ve got enough money to pay for that, I’m all for it!”
(There’s more detailed information on exactly how to carry out this “allowance” strategy in chapter 11 of my book.)
Want even more help getting large numbers of college scholarships?
Check out these three additional articles I’ve written on this subject:
Top 10 Ways to Help Your Kid Rake In More College Scholarships
Looking for Scholarships to Apply For? Here are 1.5 Million of Them
Want More College Scholarships? GPA Matters Less Than You Think.
Remember, getting scholarships is just one small piece of the puzzle when it comes to getting kids through college debt-free.
Learn all the non-saving, non-scholarship strategies in my book:
It’s a reference book, so nobody reads the whole thing cover to cover. Pick out what you need to read in it using the fast-paced, 10-minute video instructions here.
You can see hundreds of reviews of this book on Amazon by going to:
You can see why financial advising professionals love LAUNCH, here.
You can see the top 9 questions parents are asking me about LAUNCH, here.
Read just one chapter of LAUNCH every 1–3 months while your child’s in middle school and high school, and you’ll know every viable strategy for debt-free college at exactly the right time to implement it.
And if your child’s already well past middle school? That’s OK; you can run to catch up. But the process of getting your kids through college debt-free goes more smoothly the earlier you start it—especially if you’re not planning to save up any money to pay for college.
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Who is Jeannie Burlowski?
Jeannie is a full-time academic strategist, podcast host, and sought-after speaker for students ages 12–26, their parents, and the professionals who serve them. Her writing, speaking, and podcasting help parents set their kids up to graduate college debt-free, ready to jump directly into careers they excel at and love. Her work has been featured in publications such as The Huffington Post, USA Today, Parents Magazine, and US News and World Report, and on CBS News.
Jeannie also helps students apply to law, medical, business, and grad school at her website GetIntoMedSchool.com.
This article was updated on May 24th, 2024. No part of this article was written using AI.