How To 'Launch' Your New College Graduate

My daughter and son were born a shade over 14 months apart—Irish twins we were teased when they were young.? They were close growing up and both did well in school, sports, and extra-curricular activities.? They followed a somewhat similar path straight into college after high school.? My daughter (the worldly one) went out-of-state and spent her Junior year in France.? My son (the anxious homebody) stayed in-state about two hours away.

Both graduated in four years (I ‘encouraged’ them to focus and make this a priority).? Both moved home after graduation.? And both promptly took the opportunity to sink into months of what can only be described as ‘decompression phase’ post-baccalaureate.? They did little other than sleep, eat, hang out with friends, and spend every weekend out at the bars and clubs partying.? They both took steps and found menial jobs—enough cash to allow some socializing but not enough to pay rent, utilities, clothing, gasoline, and the other normal costs of living Mom and Dad had been funding for the past four years.? They specifically made little effort finding any ‘professional’ employment—you know, the kind where a resume and networking were necessary to earn an interview.? ???Every weekend from May through the end of summer there, I am told, was another good friend who had just finished college and therefore needed to be properly celebrated with a night out on the town somewhere and that simply took too much time to allow for preparing a resume, getting an interview, or looking for a career path.

Somewhere in September it started to occur to me they weren’t especially motivated to move forward with their newly acquired sheepskins and skill sets.? It occurred to my wife that being woken to the sound of keys fumbling in the locks around ‘last call’ was alerting our dogs and became annoying.? I was tasked with initiating countermeasures.?

As our daughter was the elder and went through this phase first, she was my trial balloon.? My plan worked so well with our daughter I repeated it a year later with our son.? I share the exercise with you here now because September is upon us again and parents across the country may need guidance with establishing a proper motivational plan to ‘launch’ their recently graduated progeny.? Will my plan work for you?? Perhaps.? Perhaps not, but it’s worth consideration.

I sat down with my daughter one day after Labor Day weekend and had “The Talk.”? My talk involved a new Daddy-mandate for living at home.? Because food and rent and utilities and insurance and… (construct your own list and insert here) were expensive, we were going to need her to help out ever so slightly to keep us from falling behind.? We’d start out small and work up gradually.? I told her “on October 1 rent of $100 would be due and payable to the Bank of Dad.”? On November 1, rent would “increase to $200.”? On December 1 it would increase to $300.? On January 1st it would go up to $400 and it would continue to escalate by $100 monthly “until you figure it out.”?

By Spring, both of my kids had written resumes, found interviews, secured their first real jobs after college, and moved in with roommates to an apartment and started living independently as “grownups” in the real world.? Apparently it was better to pay rent for an apartment than to pony up and give money to the Bank of Dad and live at home.

For the record, the Bank of Dad remained solvent long enough to LOAN both of them down-payment money toward their first homes years later—down-payments they repaid in full as soon as they were able to afford it.? I asked them to think of it as a loan because I wanted them to be proud of what they accomplished themselves and because they would always appreciate the fact that a helping hand wasn’t the same as a handout.?