He's going to college....."I" am learning

Well it's a sad/exciting week in the Money Tree household.

DS is gone. To quote Ned Flanders, he's "gone diddily on"

He and his dad left to begin the drive down to the US where he will stay for about 5 weeks, for spring training.

I am going to try to pretend he is on a long 4 day road trip. I have survived many of those before.

So here is what mama has learned:

1) Health Care - rather tricky when he is gone out of the country. For this spring training time, it doesn't qualify as 'student' because he is not a full time student yet. It doesn't qualify as vacation, but it's not quite a vacation.  I have spent time on the phone with my work health care provider and DH's. He has Blue Cross and they sounded much more friendly and confident when I called and they could answer the questions I had. With mine, we spent a great deal of time trying to determine if his scholarship counted as 'professional' as that would mean he was financially compensated by someone in the US and that would change his health care eligibility.  I ended up calling the team doctor who sent us the forms to fill in and she said they would take care of it down there and that the team has a great policy for their athletes. I am hoping it is as simple as she made it sound.

2) Phones - We are in a three year contract up here with his iphone so that can't be broken. I will be paying for his contract even though he isn't going to be using it up here. They have suggested that we pay to unlock it here ($50), and then when we are in the US, buy a sim card there and sign up with a company there with a good no contract plan. Anyone have any suggestions for a good northern midwest US phone company that doesn't have a complicated data plan fee???

I have paid $30 for a month of 200 minutes of LD with my Canadian provider. That will help with the calls from the team and give him a few more minutes to call his mama (lol yeah right)

3) Banking and Money
So we know that his debit card will not work in the US at stores and such. He can take money out of a machine for a fee.

His new MC would work but would also have those fees plus the money dif between countries. The replacement card took 15 business days to arrive, but we were unable to actually get through on a phone line to activate it. On hold and on hold and on  hold.

The local branch recommended he get a US MC so that we avoided those fees between currencies so we ordered that. It never arrived. Helpful. Not!  We paid a $25 fee to rush it here.  Today is business day 7 and it has not come. Rush was supposed to be 3-5 days. I am hoping they will wave the charge, but I won't hold my breath.

We can set up a US bank account there, but he needs a permanent address for his US time to do that, we are told. He won't have a permanent address until fall.

This leaves us with a dilemma for the spring training session. Really our only option is cash and I don't think it's a great idea for him to have a whack of US cash on him. If something happens, it's gone, and so is his main money source.


4) I've learned that he drove me crazy here being an almost adult doing his own thing, but my goodness do I ever miss him.