First, I just want to say that the theme here is OMG, life is crazy but money things are very very good.  This is just getting magnified (the money part).  This week was so busy I feel like I am 10 posts behind on getting caught up.  (& I am determined to get caught up, on some level.  Especially because of all the money stuff.  If I blog about nothing else, will get to the money stuff). 

Money stuff to follow in future posts...

We got MM(18) back from college.  Woohoo!  

My last post:

MM(18) is not spending any money on campus.  He is enjoying the all-inclusive lifestyle.  He's traveling to LA some weekends to work on a joint project with another college.  So he does spend some money on food on the road.  I expect he also has to contribute some to gas.  I've seen a couple of ATM and venmo withdrawals but haven't asked him about those in any detail.  I know he had some club dues to pay, and I just presume he is contributing gas when he gets rides to LA.

We get him home for Thanksgiving break, so we are excited about that. 

In the end MM(18) told me he had more cash now than when he started.  ???  I guess Grandma slipped him $40 when she visited and maybe gave him $30 for Halloween.   He had $80 of club dues to pay, but hasn't really spent any money otherwise.  (Because he withdrew the club money from the ATM, he now has all this extra/new cash).

& that reminds me, his books cost 97% less than when we were in college.  😱  For his degree, they mostly don't use books.  To be honest, the '97% less' was "this is chaos, just order new books at the book store your first quarter and we will pay for them."  That was 97% cheaper.  (MH and I didn't move out of town for college and we found it very overwhelming, getting him moved into dorms, moving 5 hours away, etc.). MH initially didn't agree that he should buy his own books, but he quickly came around, when he realized it will cost pennies.  MM(18)'s problem to figure out in the future.  He is frugal and will figure it out.  He only had to buy books for an english class.  He probably won't need to buy any for his all-science load this next quarter.  The science/math profs just give them pdfs of what they need.

I have the week off.  I was more than happy to drive to paradise to pick MM(18) up and to do the same next weekend to drop him off.  😁  

As to forgetting to refuel...  LOL.  

MH's car is still on recall (it will be a while) and isn't a useful roadtrip car in the short run.  So we are driving the hybrid on longer trips (this is pretty much our only "long trip").  We had the nicest day yesterday.  We stopped by the beach and ate lunch at our favorite little cheapie place by the beach.  The weather was perfect.  We had planned to get gas while eating but didn't pass the gas station on the way in to town.  All *3* of us promptly forgot.  MH and I 99% of the time just plug in our cars overnight to fuel (we've gone 100% electric, except for "long trips during recall").  It's no wonder we forgot.

Fast forward a few hours later and thankfully my car beeped at me and flashed the low fuel warning. !! Thank you newer/fancy car!  My first thought was literally, "But we just got fuel!"  Then quickly, "Oh....  Crap, we were going to but we didn't!"  We were about 30 miles from the next gas.  Which took a while to figure out because we had no cell service.  What I don't like about the newer cars is they just switch to "low fuel" and no longer give you an estimate.  But at that point I had about 30 miles left on gas (& surely an extra gallon of reserve above that).  & I had about 20 miles on electric left.  I had wanted to conserve it for some of the bigger hills but we let it go.  Figured it was better not to run out of gas.  😉  (The car is desgined to be driven with no electric fuel, but I think it needs *some* gas to function.  We erred on draining the electricity first).

That just added a little fun and excitement to our day.  It's been so long since I've had a gas car (er, regularly used gas), that it didn't even cross my mind that we obviously have some gas reserve.  Until I just typed this out right now!  

{Actually, now I am second guessing that last thought.  If it says "low fuel", is that the extra gallon of reserve?  I think it is, with newer cars.  I just looked it up and it's a 8.9 gallon tank.  We used 8.4 gallons.  So we were running as low on gas as we thought we were.  In the old cars, they'd go down to "empty" and you'd still have a gallon.}

In the end, we found cheaper gas anyway.  In the middle of nowhere.  It all worked out. 

When I thought that MM(18) would blow through his college dining dollars too quickly, I decided to cash out the kids' high school lunch money.  I had about $250 prepaid.  MM(18) never went back to school (in person) and so I transferred his money over to DL(16).  But he's getting free lunch indefinitely.  Initially I liked the idea to have senior year just paid for (while also having big expenses like college).  But I don't even know if DL will have to pay for lunch next year.  It took me a few tries to reach someone but just got confirmation that they are mailing me a check.  Yay!

In the meantime, MM(18) has things figured out pretty well.  The max college dining plan came with coffee and soda bonuses that seemed pretty useless (MM is not a coffee or a soda drinker).  But he figured out that he could buy food at the coffee shops and it counted as "coffee".  So he has an extra $300 to spend down.  It sounds like he will probably squeak by this first quarter.  

My very rough estimate from grocery spending at home was that MM(18) was about half of our grocery spending.  How did this shake out in October?  We spent $550 of our $850 grocery/household budget, allowing me to save $300 towards college food expenses.  I am very pleased with this first month.  That $550 included some food bought for MM(18), feeding a film crew, and also a *lot* of food waste.  We are figuring it out but it will take some time to adjust to our eating habits.  Plus, we've just been in survival mode and will continue to be for a while.

I think that $500/month will be a good estimate going forward (saving $350/month to offset college food costs).  But it will take many months to average out.

MM(18) is not spending any money on campus.  He is enjoying the all-inclusive lifestyle.  He's traveling to LA some weekends to work on a joint project with another college.  So he does spend some money on food on the road.  I expect he also has to contribute some to gas.  I've seen a couple of ATM and venmo withdrawals (from his money/accounts) but haven't asked him about those in any detail.  I know he had some club dues to pay, and I just presume he is contributing gas when he gets rides to LA.  

We get him home for Thanksgiving break, so we are excited about that.