I probably would have back a few years ago but now that there is so much scammy stuff going on I usually just ignore that stuff. I did get an errant text once from someone I knew that was obviously intended for someone else. I just ignored it because it seemed too awkward to point out the mistake and more graceful to ignore. Eventually she would notice she sent it to the wrong person. So it varies by circumstance but under no situation is mocking anyone over it the right move.

I keep getting these ads on FB and they look like they might be nice or I could just be succumbing to FB ad bombardment. Does anyone have any experience with this company?

I am sure I would do the same thing with the way housing has gotten so tight at so many schools. If my dc was considering a school with limited housing I would put down a deposit and reserve a spot.

No we file jointly. Maybe we did something wrong. I would have been much more on top of things with my older boys who got some financial aid from their schools. Would definitely be really stressful waiting for results.

My ds is a college junior. He started it yesterday and added me as the parent so I got sent the link from the student aid site and I was able to go in a complete the few questions it had for me. It then said I had to send it to my spouse to complete so I entered dh’s email. Dh, however, never got an email link to complete anything and when we logged in with his info we couldn’t find the 2024 FAFSA ds had started so that was confusing. Then ds said he finished it and got his EFC so I guess we didn’t need Dh to do anything after all? So it was kind of confusing. I don’t remember having to loop my dh in on the process in the past so I’m not sure what that was about. Maybe I hit something wrong to generate that. It isn’t a huge deal for us because ds’s scholarships aren’t need based but he does need to complete it as a formality. Hopefully we got it all done correctly.

Don’t skip it but feel free to be creative with it or do it in a less rigorous way. Kids that go to brick and mortar school have classes that just weren’t that impressive for whatever reasons ( the teacher was inexperienced, sick, had personal issues, kid was sick or distracted, school closed for extended period of time because of natural disaster, the science lab was unavailable, etc.) Kids on credit recovery where they cram a bunch of work in a short period of time just to get it done. The schools still plop “honors biology” or whatever on the transcript without batting an eye. Don’t handicap your student by leaving it off just because it wasn’t awesome or traditional. I’m not one for fudging transcripts or making up grades or anything like that but I think we shouldn’t be so beyond reproach that we hurt our kids in comparison with their peers in traditional school.

I do think it is a thing that guys would rather push the woman to actually say the words to end the relationship so they will just be a jerk, be distant, ghost you, and then when you confront them be all like if that’s what you want ok I guess we can just be friends. My high school dd is taking AP Psych and they actually discussed this as being super common in relationships. So it stinks but it is pretty common. I hesitate to say this because it is super insulting to compare your dating life to my teenager but since I’m up close and personal to hers I will tell you that the guys she has been involved with totally do this. They are all into her. Then they aren’t but they make her end it. Then they tell people she dumped them like he is such a good guy and they don’t know why she did it. Now, I’m not comparing you as a grown woman to my teen dd but maybe the men you have been involved with are comparable to the immature boys she has encountered. 🤦‍♀️ I’m sorry. I don’t have anything to offer other than I do think it is a thing for a lot of guys to act that way. So aggravating.

I’m happy to have my kids grown. I loved raising them but I often thought of myself as doing an extreme style of parenting. Homeschooling, cooking from scratch all our meals, driving them all over for all kinds of activities, limiting screens, etc etc. I was very hands on and very involved and very strict for lack of a better word. I always knew where they were and what they were doing and I had opinions on all of it. Surprisingly, to everyone, I’m pretty good at letting go once they are out of my home, which has been college. I worry about them, of course, and I’m always here for them but I don’t need to know where they are all the time and I don’t really care what job they decide to take or who they date. I care but I don’t CARE in the way I see some of my peers worked up about the details of their adult children’s’ lives. As long as they are not involved in toxic situations and they are safe I’m not getting into the details too much or fretting the small stuff of their lives or expecting them to do things my way. It is extremely freeing.

I’m glad our state schools are still using tests (at the moment). My dd gets 100s nearly across the board in the most rigorous path at her private high school. Some of her peers squeak out 90s with extra credit and teacher grace. The transcript looks identical. They all just say straights As but there is a big difference in caliber of student. When testing comes around my dd has one of the highest scores while her peers that had lower grades (but the same 4.0) have lower test scores. I think it reflects something legitimate while those parents think it does not. After all our kids have the same GPA. So in our case I’m glad our state schools still do require scores so more of the story is told. I’m also glad there are schools that will consider students without the scores. But it just seems we need some way to differentiate students when grades can’t be easily compared. I know there is more to it. My dd wins awards given by teachers who recognize the top scholar in the course and that sort of thing. The guidance counselors can look and see the numeric grades when recommending students. But as long as the grading scale is so wide and so generous I am glad there is the testing side to fill in a little more information. At my dd’s school in every class you have kids with 4.0s pushing up against a 36 ACT and also kids with 4.0s with low 20s. They are all applying to the same schools but they really are a wide range of aptitude and the test scores are not irrelevant. I hope the schools keep using scores for scholarship purposes through 2026. My dd will need money and she will be deserving and we don’t have the money to create a super interesting resume. Some kids need the scores for access the same way some kids need test optional for access.

So much junk. Sugary cereals were the best it got for breakfast. Donuts, cookies, ice cream. Whatever we wanted. Packed lunch at school was those little fake cheese product and crackers with a plastic red stick in them and then chips and a Little Debbie cake or those cheap pecan rolls. As an alternative to the fake cheese/cracker package we might have a fake cheese and cracker sandwich cracker or peanut butter cracker package. That was the protein part of our meal. I think the drink was usually those little hugs (the barrels that were like 10/$1). Dinners were typical to the time with casseroles or pot pie type things but always homemade. We did get pizza at least twice a week though. Always ice cream for bedtime snacks. And no limits on anything. Everyone was obese. My mom was a big couponer/sale shopper. We used to spend all day Saturday driving from store to store working all the deals. So the prevailing requirement for what we ate was price.

Thats right. I was so snarly they didn’t even interview him because I knew he had to be close or he should have been in the pool to be considered but he didn’t even get invited to interview. But obviously he was of that quality because he did get the call. So who knows what the real story is behind the scenes. I suspect he was on a list of kids they knew would come regardless of whether he got the scholarship because he was all in for the home state school basically from birth and he didn’t need to be enticed and it was pretty obvious from his application and profile. I just don’t think these things are as straightforward as they seem and you can make yourself crazy trying to figure it out. He has been a top performer and leader on campus so he totally deserved the scholarship btw. Lol.

My dd’s high school has some of these electives with interesting titles but I admit my gut reaction to them isn’t “oh that sounds like a great class” but rather that those are easy classes for the non AP track kids. It never occurred to me my dd would enroll in any of those classes because she is on the AP track where the good teachers and classes are. But maybe I’m wrong. That is just my bias and gut reaction. As with anything I’m sure there are places where those are amazing interesting classes and others where they are not.

You probably don’t want to know 😉 My ds, in this special cohort, says he looks at some of his peers and is blown away like yeah they really are amazing and then others are just head scratchers. Some sure look politically and financially connected. I told my ds when he got in as an alternate that he is probably replacing someone from our geographical area who is also male and similar major and he happened to meet a girl (from our city) who said “hey my twin brother turned down that scholarship” and it tracked. So who knows? My dd will be applying to this school in two years and of course she thinks she is equally impressive and I know she has no shot but I keep telling my ds to get in there and pick someone’s brain about what has gone on behind the scenes. On the upside of not being beckoned for an interview weekend. I am a skeptic on these things and think often the winners are selected in advance and these are often (not always!) recruiting events. So you may have just saved your time and not gotten your hopes up going through a farce. I definitely wish they wouldn’t do that (the schools that do). Good luck to all of you!

Agreed. Things just haven't been equal but everyone has had what they needed to the best of our (limited!) ability. Oldest played travel ball. Second is the only one we gave a car to. Different needs came at different times and there are ten years between oldest and youngest. We can afford private school for my youngest. Should she not get it just because we couldn't have done it earlier or x 4 kids? We would have moved heaven and earth to get all our kids to adulthood with what they needed and I can't write checks to even it up. I've always been amazed at people that said each kid gets exactly a set amount of money for college or cars or wedding or whatever. There are just too many variables for that to work for me at all. My youngest, my dd, is definitely reaping financial benefits of her birth position. But her parents are tired and she misses having siblings at home and she doesn't remember grandparents that have passed away. So there is only so much of making everything equal all the time. (and I absolutely may spend more on the expensive wedding because it feels necessary due to the setting...I'm not above my own feelings and social pressure and setting influencing me)

We used to do this. We would look at when courses were historically offered for de and usually that gave us a good starting point and honestly my kids mostly took gen ed courses with multiple sections and the school they used for de gave priority registration for de students so we knew we could get our first choice courses. Then we would look at what online courses were really important to us and work around those. I did find that for my dc, and i had three go through this process, once the de door opened that was always the preference. De classes were just so much easier for them and less busywork, more bang for the buck than online classes that once we started with the de, we ended up with almost all de. Going back to online high school was a tough sell after in person de. So, we ended up in mostly de once we started that and ended up just filing in gaps around the de. So scheduling de became more important almost all the time.

I think this is about where we will end up hopefully. This set amount and then I plan to be the most easy going and delightful MIL and not have any opinions or demands regarding the wedding and related festivities. 😊

Gosh I just don’t know what we will do. We have just done our best to get everyone what they needed through college and launch and it was not equal. Not in what they needed or what we could do. Now my dd is in a private high school that costs more than what we paid for anyone’s college so we have not been even around here. We have figured we would make it up on the back end for the older kids we couldn’t help as much. If everything had to be even no one would have gotten what they needed. Now as we look at weddings it is going to be all over the place. I think oldest two will get married in the next couple years and it is two extremes. Oldest has a girlfriend that comes from extreme wealth (like her family might want a prenup) and second ds has a girlfriend whose parents will help with nothing. I am sure the rehearsal dinner for the oldest will be several magnitudes more expensive than the entire wedding for the second son. So we can’t pay for an adequate rehearsal dinner even if we want to for the oldest 😭and maybe could do the whole tiny wedding for the second. So I don’t know but I do think we have to come up with a dollar amount and give it as a wedding gift to use for the wedding or for setting up house or however they see fit. We gave second ds a car which we never did for oldest so I am comfortable with the number being higher for oldest (making it up on the back end). So sorry I am no help but I do think I will be facing this with two sons in a short time. It is embarrassing to not be able to do the traditional rehearsal dinner but I know I can’t do it to their expectations.

My point is just that if dh and I had followed his advice and not bought a house until we were out of debt and had a big down payment and an emergency fund and only had a mortgage that was 25% of our take home pay for a 15 year mortgage we would not be where we are today. And while I get the fiscally conservative advice I am also glad I didn’t follow it. So…this isn’t Dave Ramsey specific it is just an observation that based on my own life we did better to just take some leaps rather than listen to all the expert advice. And our young people are just bombarded by influencers and advice in a way that dh and I were not. And that is a mixed bag.

Yeah I agree there is some balance to be struck there somewhere. I’m not suggesting my kids strike out impulsively or be delusional about their situations and I totally agree that things really are difficult for young people starting out today. But I still wouldn’t own a home if I was following all of Dave Ramsey’s rules that are all over the internet. And sure anyone that gives you advice about buying a home is wise to advise you of all the expenses that will come up. All of that is wise and prudent. But I also know dh and I would have been no where if we had not done anything ever until we had six months of an emergency fund saved up. So no arguing that it is good advice but we sure didn’t follow it and we lived to tell. But obviously the cost of education and housing and healthcare and everything is just so high. I don’t know how to reconcile all of that. I think for my family I hope to be able to help out some with my kids when they need it and always have a place in my home for people to return to in crisis.

I think for my own kids the constant information overload maybe just isn’t helpful. I think back to when dh and I graduated from college and got married and started having kids shortly thereafter. We were broke and dumb and didn’t have family around. But we didn’t have constant social media and news telling us how doomed we were or constant pictures of peers doing amazing things that we weren’t. We just did stuff. One foot in front of the other. We made alot of mistakes that perhaps we wouldn’t have made if we had more information but we didn’t suffer paralysis by analysis either. When we wanted to buy a house we went and talked to a mortgage broker and a realtor and figured out if it would work for us. We didn’t subject ourselves to years of reading about real estate and market watching and getting a hundred opinions on it. We just did it. And I’m sure we did all kinds of things that were ill advised but at least we were doing things and moving forward or sideways and making decisions and not stuck in an endless loop of information overload and negativity. We just did stuff without needing it to be perfect. But when you have constant influencers and media personalities telling you the secrets to success or the rules of finance or whatever I think maybe it just gets harder to just act.

Hahaha. I know! And he knows too because we’ve discussed it and we have always talked about money all the time since they were young. It’s just the drumbeat of negativity coming from everywhere all the time. Now…I do think it is possible he and his girlfriend look at houses that the partners at their firm currently live in or that her family that comes from money own and and that seems like a reach. And it is…he’s 25!!!

My 3 young adult men are super hard workers and making their way. They are really scrappy and frugal and I think to some degree they feel mildly traumatized by not having alot growing up and are determined to do better. So they aren’t in the particular funk many of you are discussing. However, I think the negativity of messaging and doom and gloom about the future takes such a toll. My 25 yo and his girlfriend make really good money for their ages. They are both on the partner tracks at their firm and don’t live together but combined they make probably $250,000 already and their earnings are about to really take off. The other night sitting here he said something about never being able to afford to own a home. Thats just not true. Home ownership has gotten more difficult, for sure, but he and his girlfriend, if they marry or combine households, can absolutely own a home. They don’t live in California. So if my very balanced and successful and mentally healthy young adult is allowing that kind of thinking to creep in I can only imagine how hopeless things feel to regular young people still searching or who make normal incomes for young people. I struggle to balance the reality of it being so much harder for this generation (my dh and I had nothing when we married and had kids right away but our rent was also $290) with optimism and encouragement. It doesn’t do any good to just tell them they can do it because we did it but getting down in the doom and gloom is counter productive as well.

For me it would be less about not tacking an extra few days/flight onto that particular trip as it would be “we can’t visit because we don’t fly” and then making that trip. Hearing they were planning the trip at all would be a gut punch after getting the line about not visiting because of the flight. I’m sorry.

Not quoting but I have had similar experiences with getting gifts from my dh. I would ask for something specific and he would take that as a jumping off point to get me something kind of similar but enough different to be not anything like what I want or can use but then I look like the jerk for not liking it. For example I might ask for something in a specific size or color but they were out of that or he forgot so he substitutes another size or color that makes the item unusable or undesirable for me. But in his mind he got what I wanted or tried really hard to. But I just get mad because it isn’t at all what I asked for. I wish I could say we came to a solution but our solution was to stop the gift giving. But my dh is not really open to communication and working on issues. I feel like this should be a solvable problem but for us the solution was to stop getting gifts for each other. It would be nice to exchange gifts with dh but it was really making me angry and it is better to just not do it.

I am one who is always pretty negative about the possibility of huge scholarships. I am sorry you are disappointed and I have BTDT and in one case was super offended my kid didn’t even get an interview. I do have a kid with a full ride but I still feel jaded about it and IRL I hardly tell people about his scholarship because I actually think it gives people false hope that their kid will have the same outcome. My ds was a really strong candidate but he was just an alternate for this scholarship he got. If that other kid hadn’t turned it down he would have gotten hardly anything in scholarships. He was the same great candidate the day before that other kid dropped out but he was so close to getting nothing. So even though it worked out in a literally life changing way for my ds, I am still jaded. He was awesome the day before he got the call and had nothing to show for it. It is just really tough out there.