I’m having withdrawal after dropping S25 off on Saturday! We had such a wonderful 8 days having him home. He was absolutely exhausted and sick when he got home and took a few days to sleep and recover. He saw high school friends almost every day for a few hours, and it was so wonderful to see him reconnect with his buddies. He also was very sweet about spending time with us, and we watched a lot of shows and movies together. For Thanksgiving we drove up to Central Illinois to see my sister in law’s family. Despite some family dysfunction, it was a good trip. We had our own Air BnB, which gave us a lot of down time to hang out with D25. The only hiccup was the winter storm that hit the area when we were leaving on Saturday, and it took us 11 1/2 hours to drive to Terre Haute to drop him off and then make our way back to Tennessee. I’m missing him so much, but he seems happy to be back with his school buddies.
Today is the first day of winter quarter, and I’m hoping the schedule is a little less intense than last quarter. The first quarter ended well with two As and three B+s. Given the level of the rigor plus the learning curve, I’m really, really proud of how he navigated his adjustment.
I’m back in the office for a day and a half and then my mom and I are leaving on a bucketlist trip to do a Rhine River Christmas market cruise on Wednesday. I’m a little stressed about being gone for 8 days, but I’m also looking forward to making memories with my mom. It should be an adventure!
Sorry about all the crazy travel stuff for your kiddos and hope everyone made it back to campus safely. Have a great week, everyone!
Lovely reading about what everyone has been up to. I am still adjusting to the radical change that it has been since S25 left for college. The kid who would not leave the house and had his mom schedule haircuts, is so independent now I think he was just waiting to get out into the world.
He spent Thanksgiving with a few friends at his girlfriend’s house and tbh I wasn’t prepared for the emptiness I felt on Thanksgiving day. How is it that one day, they are fully present, and the next they are gone?
I get very little insight on what is going on in his life. He seems to solve all problems himself (or maybe he isn’t solving them?) I get a few breadcrumbs of info here and there, but it is becoming very clear that he wants and needs to detach and grow. What a ride!
I take solace in remembering that I wanted out of my parents house and supervision at 15, and from that point on, I was away from home as much as possible. Not because I had issues at home (because I didn’t), but because I just wanted to be on my own. Heck, I even left my country 26 years ago!
Her room change was approved! She is so happy and excited and I am very relieved. She will have a single room in a larger shared space. We think as well that we have hit on a double major that she is excited about. Next semester will be a chance to reset.
If all of that doesn’t help, we are prepared for her to transfer schools and we are coming up with a list of possibilities. The first choice is to make her current school work as there are many aspects of it that she does like…but we’re preparing for a different eventuality as well.
Glad to hear about the room change. Hope next semester brings a better experience. As I said before you and your D have and continue to hande this trying situation very well.
Hoping one of you sages can answer, and if not, I’m paging @kelsmom or @BelknapPoint , who seem to know all things in the college financial world. We got a check in the mail from D25’s college yesterday; apparently they put the waived health insurance fees on the bill I paid, and then took them off after I paid it. No big deal, except that I paid from D25’s 529 account, so I need this money to go back to it, not to me. Can D25 just deposit it back in the 529 account somehow? Obviously it’s made out to D25, not the 529 account.
I don’t know about your kids, but this is finals week for mine. Best of luck to all of your kids and may them arrive home safely soon!
No idea if it can go back in the 529, but maybe it can go towards Spring tuition? Like she just pays that amount for Spring and you pull the rest from the 529 (or whatever you were planning).
I just don’t know if it has to be used this calendar year if it got pulled out this calendar year to avoid doing something wrong with 529s. Tuition and housing for next quarter have already been paid; I don’t think there will be any new bills before 1/1/2026.
I called the brokerage that administers the 529 and got information on how to get it all to work out evenly. You do need to get on this quickly, though, because everything 529-related operates by calendar year.
Ah, you are speedier on paying the spring tuition than we are. For one school (the one where my mom has to work with her broker and they send a paper check from the CollegeAmerica account she set up) I think the check has been sent. For the other son’s school, which we’re half funding from the 529 and half from our checking account (this is my child who is a senior, we’re emptying the 529 and it isn’t quite enough) they just posted the bill on Friday, so we haven’t paid yet.
If a student receives a refund of qualified education expenses that were treated as paid by a QTP distribution, the student can recontribute these amounts into any QTP for which they are the beneficiary within 60 days after the date of the refund to avoid the need to figure the taxable part of the QTP distribution.
However, this may be complicated by the fact that 529 money should not have been used in the first place to pay for the health insurance, as that is not a 529 qualified expense. Always be careful when paying the college bill, to make sure you know what you are being asked to pay. If I was in your position, I would just have the student recontribute the refund to the 529 as an overpayment before the end of the year, as long as you are still in the 60 day window.
(1) my boys are in opposite directions away from me, one in MA and the other in SC. This was made very clear when I texted on our group chat for my MA boy to stay warm last week. MA boy replied “yeah, it’s gotten really cold, it’s down to 0 tonight”. SC boy then replied “yeah, cold here too. I had to wear pants every day this week for the first time.”
Yeah. So Cold. Had to wear pants.
(2) Very random aside - someone sitting near me at work is eating something for lunch that smells fantastic. I haven’t been to the store yet, so I brought cottage cheese, since that was what was in my fridge. I am not excited about this.
(3) S25 gets home Friday night, S22 gets home Sunday night. I am hoping for good final exams for them, but more than that, I seem weirdly fixated on how fast time is going and how much I’m struggling with the end of this era. We’re taking a big vacation over the holidays - which we never do. But we’re doing it because it’s the last year that (hopefully) my S22 won’t have a job, and when he has a job, he may not have much leave. So while they are both in college and have long winter break, we’re taking a week from 12/16-12/23. And as I’m planning that, I can’t stop thinking about how my big kid is finishing college in May, and how did that time fly so quickly, and my little kid is already one-eighth done, and boy isn’t that time going to fly quickly. I want to be living in and enjoying the moment, so I’m really trying to focus on that.
S25 and S23 both have exams Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. S25 says he’ll probably come home on Friday. S23 says he’ll be home Saturday afternoon. Must be some good parties on campus!
Hofstra doesn’t publish their finals schedule until sometime into November(!), so we had bought C25 tickets home leaving JFK the evening of 19 December (Friday), after the last possible date for finals (i.e., ending 2:00p that day). It turns out the child’s last final is actually the 16th (Tuesday), but when we offered to try to push the ticket earlier we were told no, coming home earlier is dispreferred, because the kid had already planned a full day Thursday of touristing NYC with a friend who’s also not leaving til Friday.
And you know, I just want to say that this does not merit a reaction. After the stress of being thrown into a 17-credit schedule, compounded with the pretty serious health scare midsemester, I want the child to take every single opportunity to just enjoy what’s available out there.
reaction. After the stress of being thrown into a 17-credit schedule, compounded with the pretty serious health scare midsemester, I want the child to take every single opportunity to just enjoy what’s available out there.