​'I've Really Learned How to Be Self-Sufficient at Penn' Says Student Whose Parents Deposit Weekly Allowance Into Bank Account

In this economy, there really are no guarantees. One minute you have enough money to support yourself, and the next minute it could all disappear. Eliza Hampton (C ’20) feels that she has really come to understand this. “My friends will just throw twenty bucks at an Uber like it's nothing. That’s insane to me, especially when it happened last Tuesday, because my parents still hadn’t deposited any money into my bank account.”

While her friend group finalized spring break plans, Hampton silently suffered. She knew that she would not be able to pay for the flight until her dad texted her back with his credit card number. It was truly an eye-opening and stressful half-hour that she waited, but she ended up being relieved when she realized she could just use the credit card she was given “for emergencies.”

“I just think self-sufficiency is an important lesson to learn,” Hampton said. She explained how, instead of choosing Sweetgreen every day for lunch and dinner, she'll go to Sweetgreen for lunch and cook dinner at her apartment to save a few extra dollars. Instead of always asking her parents for money for concerts, she uses the birthday money her grandma gave her. In the extenuating circumstance that her laptop was stolen, her parents got her a new one, though, because “that’s for school.”