The last week (er, two weeks) have been a whirlind.  Mostly good things.  MM(20) visited for dinner Friday night (over one week ago), we went to GMIL's 99th birthday party that Saturday, and MH got home from his trip that Sunday night.  I paid off the travel credit card bill.  We ended up using exactly that $3K gift money to cover the cost.  (The goal was to cover a chunk of the costs.  It's just gravy that it covered everything.)  More details later, if I ever have any time.  I had family visiting from the mid-west and MH needed to help his GMIL with a new computer, so we were in the Bay Area this past weekend. 

I've got 2023-2024 college year mostly wrapped up.  I mentioned (re: annual goals) that this won't be a big college expense year.

DL(20) received his state financial aid check/refund last week.  So now I have a better idea the flow of things.  Refunds arrive 11/1 & 3/1, roughly.  

I received a $2,000 refund (spring semester) from DL's college and a $1,074 bill (spring quarter) from MM's college on the same day.  I paid MM's tuition and checked off on my side bar that his third year is done and paid for.

Note:  $2,000 is the net I should owe for DL's fall semester.  Will just park the money in savings to cover the rest of his college expenses this calendar year.  In the short run, the $2K will let me cash flow MM's tuition before I reimburse myself from various buckets.  This semester thing is a lot more simple than the quarter thing.  

For MM's tuition, I am cash flowing the tax credit ($833, or 1/3 tax credit).  I have the benefit of reduced taxes, to pay this portion of tuition.  The remaining $241 I will pull from MM's gifted college fund. 

I did also cash out two of the I Bonds (end of 2023) and am able to reimburse myself monthly for MM(20)'s rent.  We have never had more than a roughly 1% interest rate (or some promo deals on smaller amounts of savings) during our adulthood.  I more viewed the I Bonds as an investment (that was mega interest for a while).  Turned maybe $20K of savings into $22K+ for MM's college expenses (woohoo)!  But now that I am cashing that out, I am really enjoying having some decent interest rates on our cash.  Any incidental college expenses that MM(20) has at this point should just be covered by interest.  This is also how I am funding his utilities.  I am leaning towards just hiring a cleaner (with this interest money) when MM's lease ends.

In other news.  Very cautiously optimistic but...  It sounds like the girlfriend is bouncing back?  She told me that she unexpectedly felt well for a whole 5 days and that she was traveling to visit MM(20) for a couple of days.  She is doing so well that those 'couple of days' has turned into 2 weeks.  MM was just telling me she extended her stay so that she could go down to LA and visit her cousin's baby or something like that.  I had no idea if they found some underlying condition (had more answers), found meds that worked, or what happened.  I spoke to MM(20) a couple of days ago and he told me that she is just getting better, as they said would happen.  They just didn't know if it would take months or years.  My recollection is that she has been down for 5 months.  It sounds like she is putting this chapter behind her.