The school lunch program is such a pain in my lower backside.

They use a 6 digit pin to pay for their lunches. They enter the pin number once, and the students name appears on the registers screen. The adult asks the child if their name is _____, if the child says yes or nods then the number is charged.

The school district 7 miles away has the child use their thumb scan. Now that would be nice.

Well once again this year I am battling the unauthorized charges issue. This year I put NO money in my childs account. It was at a zero balance, until yesterday. Yesterday my son brings home a note saying his account was $1.75 short. This means the charge was placed this school year (last year lunch was $1.50).

My son has had cold lunch everyday, #1 because I need to limit his dairy, #2 because the money in his lunch account last year seemed to have a leak.

Well I called the school and left a message yesterday after I got the note. I then called back this morning. The charge was tracked to ANOTHER school. So the charge will be removed. I had his account flagged. His account now says NO Breakfast, NO Lunch CASH ONLY. Hopefully this WORKS.

Our School district has a NO hunger policy, so I am not sure IF this will help.

The policy is that a elementary school student can charge lunch without a problem no matter the negative balance in the account. In Junior high the student is allowed to charge a cheese sandwich or the main entree and Senior high the student can only charge a cheese sandwich.

So if the lunch person at the other school whom allowed this student whom is not my child to use my childs account sees the note but the child wants food she might ignore the CASH ONLY note just like she/he ignored the note on the screen about that account number belonging to a student in another school.

I need to get a note from my son's doctor so he can get juice instead of milk with his meals. Since my cousin will be having my son use hot lunch and the standard is milk.

This weekend I worked my tail off on Friday. Of course I still need to seal the wood of the front porch.

I might do that tonight. I needed to let the wood dry out after washing it (twice) and sanding it. Yesterday I noticed dirty shoe prints on the deck after the wash job so I will need to sweep/sand those off (no water) then seal the deck.

I think the reason the stain/seal was not lasting was in years past I was rushing the stain/seal after the cleaning off of the old product and the first year I think the problem was we did not clean the wood to make sure there was not any kind of product on it.

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After cleaning the front porch I painted the trim around the doors; it looks real nice. We went out to buy a new door bell. Once we got home we noticed the holes in the siding from the old bell were spaced farther apart then the new bell. So went to a different store and same deal. Which means we had to go back to the overpriced place that we picked our lights etc out back in Fall 2006. We closed on our house in Feb 2007. Not sure when the light bell got installed so the doorbell is a little over 3 years old. It still works it is just that the button has a hole in it like the plastic just disinigrated. Since it looked terrible we wanted to get it fixed as it is a eye sore upon entering the house.

I went into the store and explained that we closed on our house in Feb 2007 and was wonder what there warrenty was on the door bells. We explained how it seemed like the door bell button just disinigrated. I was not expecting anything but figured I would try. The floor guy went to ask the big boss and said before leaving to ask her that usually it is a year warrenty but he might be able to do a 30% discount. He came back after a while and said that they would give us the replacement FREE but they needed the old bell.

So we drove home took the door bell off and my son and I returned to the store to get the new one. We had a white door bell that actually looked a little cream now BUT they were out even the display model was gone so we ended up with a silver one. Oh well FREE is FREE and I think the bling of the silver adds a nice touch to our front door which feels a little plain at this time. All in all we probubly spent $.50 in gas and got a FREE doorbell. Now I just have to return the door bell we had originally bought at a hardware store. Regular price of door bell $19.97 @ overpriced lighting store which we got for free because we asked about a warrenty.

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This Saturday we had one showing. I think the STBX is getting nervous as time goes on because I think he is secretly wishing that it will sell in April because then he can move out of state faster. The school he wants to attend keeps asking if he wants to start sooner because they have openings. He told me they say it is easier to get a earlier date and not a later date so he is locked into August BUT if we sell the house earlier he could move earlier. STBX promised to watch DS this summer but I have a feeling I am going to be putting him into daycare this summer. I cant really blame him for wanting to start early after all if he does then he does not have to get an apartment here if we sell before August. It just sucks because as usual I am the one having to scrabble to make everything work.

Today we have two showings.

I guess I do not have a preferance when it comes to selling the house. When we sell I will move into an apartment and my housing expenses will go down by about $600 per month. When we sell STBX will move out of state and depending on when that happens then come summer I will need to pay for fulltime summer daycare $500+ per month which is a $335 increase since right now my afternoon care cost is $165. Also once he moves our electric will go down because he runs his computer and all his electronics 24/7 and even forgets to turn off the TV.

I think my food costs will go down also since while he was gone we averaged $50 a week including resterants and now we are averaging $150 in groceries alone.

So if you do the math it is still cheaper and the stress of everything will be less, I just wish that my little boy could have a fun free carefree summer. I think I am going to be enrolling him in the summer school program 8am-12noon (FREE) then figure out a afterschool program for the rest of the day. It is three weeks a month for June and July so I could actaully take vacation the other week. Then I think I could enroll him in the all day August program at the place he goes to now afterschool.

This just makes me a little sad as I really just wanted my little boy to get a summer of going to bed late, sleeping in late, riding his bike, playing with kids and not having to be stuck in a classroom from 8am-noon.

I need to start clearing out the storage unit, since we have desided what STBX wants as his property. Maybe I can talk to my grandmother about a rummage sale in May. I wonder if there is time for a small one this Weekend at her house since we have the open house this weekend.

Okay I now I am putting the cart before the horse. I just like to plan ahead instead of looking back and saying I should have done that. The Story is if we sell the house for what the insurance value is then my share of the profit would be $38,719.20. We could get more but then we could get less. But better to plan lots of good things and make a few happen and be left with future saving goals then to not plan and to SPEND.

The amount referenced takes into effect the off the top deduction of money going to our sons college fund. See when I first went back to work after having our son my aunt babysat for us for FREE; the deal was we would use the money to save for our sons future, sons college, pay off our debt or save for a house down payment.

We had NO debt so we saved as much of the saved amount as we could part of it for our son and part for the house down payment. Once we got to the house closing we barrowed that money from our son since technically she did say house down payment.

Well now that the house is being sold and we are going to rent for a while, the first cut of the profits goes to repaying the Aunty Daycare saved $ into a college 529 account.

Then the remainder will be split between the husbter and I. My share should be $38,719.20.

I am planning:
$5000 Roth IRA Me
$6000 CD for Braces for SON
$5000 Money for 529 (want to pay in full now a 4yr community college cost then let ride until college so the gains are basically the cost of college increases)
$18,000 Emergency Fund
??? $4719.20 ???

If you were debt free and came across this Money how would you spend it.