Not sure I'm following you. $3500 trip to France, and driving? How do these relate?

You could tell her that her driving depends on her grades, you know...

It's not an automatic thing.

I've got a 20something daughter, so I got it immediately.

The $3500 is coming right at about the same time that there's also going to be a the major expense of insuring someone that age - it's more of a strain on a budget than most people can handle back to back.

The cost was probably around $3500, but she's also going into her senior year in two weeks and is a 2nd degree black belt in Tang Soo Do. Everything is relative. I'll send you a PM because there's more I don't want to publicize.

I loved languages and foreign cultures and hated my high school.

I even went to an informational meeting, but in the end, my parents said they couldn't afford to pay the fees.

And that was the end of that.

There are those of us who are attached to our kids and the others who can't wait to be rid of them. There's a "minor" difference there.

If nothing else just to know what it feels like. I wouldn't worry about it too much. My son did a similar trip a few years ago and it only cost a third of that much. Even at that probably only about 1/10th of all the French students went and I live in a pretty affluent area. My guess is at that price, not too many students are going to go.

Doesn't sound much like she's earned it with her shitty grades anyway.

As far as the amount, that sounds like a reasonable figure for even a very short trip to Europe. My fiancee would really love to go to Rome next summer, but a quick perusal of room rates and airfare demonstrates that on my salary a week at San Diego ComicCon will have to suffice.

A friend's daughter and her boyfriend in their late twenties went to Europe last spring and booked cool small apartments through Airbnb. They put their itinerary on the internet and I was impressed at the accommodations and prices.

My son needed one night's stay in Los Angeles and I found 3 on airbnb, right where he needed to be, for $65-$75.

https://www.airbnb.com/

offer to help pay for the college semester in France (or wherever) depending on grades and motivation, but that you can;t do it now for the various reasons given. If she really wants it she will work for it.

I DO always encourage doing whatever you can to get kids out to see other places, but the specific circumstances you describe warrant some "management" (read: parental manipulation )

even though I wasn't taking French. The teacher liked me from another class. I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. The opporunity to expand your worldview firsthand at such a young age is invaluable, I think. It really gives you perspective that stays with you forever. It's a big, diverse, wonderful world. The more you see of it, the more you realize that and appreciate it. My 2 cents.

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It's a HUGE chance to open her mind up to a LOT of different perspectives
and adventures... and that open mind could very well stay with her for the
rest of her life -- perhaps one of those "opportunities of a lifetime".
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My kids also wanted this stuff: the 8th grade Washington DC trip, the band adventures - all of that's fine but you have to get them invested in working for it as well. My kids had to earn it by working for me and others before I signed my credit card on the line.

There's always babysitting, helping the neighbor with their shit clean up jobs, working at Mickey D's, or even doing things at home that you'd normally pay for someone else to do - painting, window washing etc

I didn't get to drive until I had a job. I got to borrow a car of my parents for awhile but it was expected that I buy my own car and get my own insurance soon after that.

No kid should expect their parent to pay their insurance to play AND buy them a car. That is total bullshit. Please don't do that.

get a car as soon as he/she gets a driver's license. As to the increase in car insurance, there is no reason why a child can't earn the money necessary to cover the increase in insurance due to adding him/her onto your policy.

We live two blocks from the high school. She can't pull that shit on us!

If $3500 isn't lying around right now, I'm guessing that means it's not readily available yet for college tuition. I'd prioritize putting the money into savings for that.

I organized a school trip to do relief work after Katrina. We had a small enough people wanting to go that they all fit in a van. My husband and I paid for that, and I didn't ask the students to pay for anything except to bring enough cash to cover their own meals during the long drive down there. I have real problems with school functions that in effect exclude students who can't afford opportunities like that, or exclude students who aren't in honor society or other stuff like that. We figured the cost of the van and gas was a reasonable amount that we might pay for a vacation if we went someplace nice. And once we got there, the relief organization paid for lodging.

Maybe there's something like that that you could encourage her to organize, where it's not as much about the privileged traveling abroad experience, and more about doing something meaningful for other people. Personally, I think that does as much to develop people's character as traveling in France. I dunno, maybe she already has a lot of experiences like that, though. I really have no context for making alternate suggestions!

$3500 sounds like a lot to me.
Explain to her: you really want to go, we'll have to see improvement in grades AND financial contribution on her part of XXX. Mention cost of insurance is an issue, so she might want a choice: Drive, or France with grades and contribution.

This too shall pass, mad! (And then, there will be something else!!!)

I was in French Immersion and it's common for trips to Quebec and France to be planned every few years. I didn't go on any of them. Why? Tours like that are WAY overpriced. My brother also didn't go, and spent a whole summer in Europe (once he graduated) for what he would've paid for the one week France trip. My parents probably could have afforded it but chose not to pay it. I am bothered a bit by it, because I was a straight-A student and had a job and offered to pay half (and again, they could've afforded it). I also had my own car and paid my own insurance, so not the same situation...and unfortunately my kids won't get to go either, since I'm a broke student/single mom.

At any rate, as a teen we did go to Quebec as a family because I have relatives there that 'housed' us for a week. Maybe you could look into a family vacation to Quebec so your daughter can find some motivation for speaking French? It's closer and may be cheaper...

... and we ended up in France sleeping in a park and eating wild berries and food given to us by generous strangers. We were in France because we'd worn out our welcome in Franco's Spain, but that's another story.

At the time the local French authorities dealt with indigent American by passing them on to England -- they bought us ferry tickets and asked us to leave.

My parents did have some money, just not with them. This was before electronic banking and it wasn't always easy to get hold of it, especially in small amounts. My parents were renting out our family home during our travels and getting that money to wherever we happened to be in Europe wasn't a trivial problem.

When our own kids were in high school my wife and I said "no" to several trips like your daughter's -- the most we could afford were a couple of Disneyland band competitions.

My wife traveled through Europe on her own the summer before she started college. I'd already had my European experience, gasoline was cheap, so I skipped my senior year in high school, threw my sleeping bag in my car and visited Mexico, Canada, and quite a few states I'd never been to. Then I went to junior college to make up for the lost high school years, and then on to university which was very inexpensive then.

Sometimes it makes me sad how structured life seems to be these days, like this society has got us in a vice and the screws are tightening.