Just a 49-year-old mom of 2 in Northern California. My kids are Monkey Monkey(MM) and Teacher Monkey (TM). I am married to Monkey Hubby (MH). Not much to report here. Everyone is peeling off, with MH going back to work and the GF starting a new job tomorrow. It should be a lot more peaceful on the home front.
I just looked up the teaching credential deadlines, out of curiosity, re: TM(21). It looks like the deadline might be 3/1. & then the deadline for the school district money (they might pay for most of his expenses) is in early July. He has some time.
I went to the dentist a couple of weeks ago and I noticed last week? that the charge never showed up on my credit card. I didn't reach out yet because the dentist's son is a freshman at MM(23)'s college and I figured they were moving him into the dorms last week.
I was just updating my financial records and I saw the charge pop up when I downloaded it into my financial software. I thought, "Odd it took so long, but there it is." It wasn't until I looked closer that I realized they. paid. me. 😂
I can't think of that ever happening before. Where I thought I was paying someone and they accidentally issued a credit?
The dentist's wife handles the front desk stuff and while I usually say very little to her, I remember talking to her about moving into the dorms, her baby going off to college, etc. Clearly this was very distracting.
This reminds me. A sidetrack...
I always say that everyone tells me their money stuff. I guess this extends to my dentist. I just always found in entertaining but never thought too much about it. But I get it, he's trying to find a topic to connect with me.
My dentist told me a while ago he hadn't 'saved for college' because he has a bajillion dollars. He seems to hold me in the same regard, which is crazy to me. Even when he asked me if we had 529 plans and I told him our income was too low to get any benefit from that. Comments like that go in one ear and out the other. He apparently thinks I am a baller. Maybe I will reinforce this baller opinion when I pay him back this week, without complaint. I get it, he is probably used to dealing with more financially stressed people.
Side note: While the dentist is a baller, he mostly talked about his kids going to community college and/or graduating very quickly, in recent years. It sounds like that came more from his kids than him. They are/were high school day traders and very money focused. It's interesting given how 99% of these conversations are about how community college is beneath people. My dentist didn't have that "it's beneath us" attitude and I am sure that is a lot of it. The final college choice might have been somewhat influenced by my family. The dentist always seemed envious about my kids' degree and college choice. Although he is clearly very passionate about dentistry, he was an engineer in another life. & apparently holds this college in high regard.
Edited to add: I Zelled the money back to them but it's annoying because I do not use a cash system. (My system revolves around charging everything on a credit card.) It's just mildly annoying.
August 25th, 2026 at 12:22 am 1787617361
My father, on the other hand, graduated from a very prestigious university that would have costed nearly $100k a year there (factoring in the dorm, campus food, and parking). True, him being an alum would have probably gotten me through the door, but wow, the cost though. To financially strain myself and perhaps my parents there, especially since I wasn’t interested in the same profession that he was, just made no sense to me.
Glad you had a baller dentist though haha.
August 25th, 2026 at 11:06 pm 1787699163
So i decided it was okay. I hadn't flushed out our FIRE plan, and we could divert a little more for college so i did. Timing was brilliant and we rode covid to massive gains and it compounded to fund college.
But life didn't happen the way i expected.
August 26th, 2026 at 04:04 pm 1787760299
There is absolutely nothing wrong with junior college -- cheaper and get the basics out of the way before going somewhere else. Same with going to a state university instead of a private one if you don't have great scholarships. A friend of mine after his company shut down (a factory) decided to attend the local university which was private and very pricey. Instead of working some, he put all expenses on student loans...he had a family. He got a teaching job right out of college, but wound up paying those student loans until about a year or so before he retired. He said he wished he had attended a state university since the other one was like triple the cost for the same degree.