I posted a couple weeks ago about a situation with my son's preschool. We decided it wasn't a good fit and pulled him out, and fortunately the school refunded our money! At the same time we discovered that this year paying for a high quality preschool program just isn't in our budget, so we are going to skip preschool this year and look into adjusting our budget for next year.

However, we have $300 in our FSA dependent care account to use, since we had planned on using that money to pay for preschool. Fortunately we were able to stop the deductions (withdrawing from preschool was a qualifying event), but now we have to use that money or lose it.

I tried a drop in childcare center today and it was AWFUL! There were 10 children (2 of them 7 months or younger and the rest toddlers, under 4) and the 5 month old baby was sitting in a bouncer on a table facing a tv and an older child was bouncing her (forcfully enough that it made me gasp and ask the staff person about it...turns out it was her kid and "oh, she's fine!". There was only one staff there at the time (the manager left to take her child to school?!?) and she was checking kids in and out and had her back to the room full of toddlers. I panicked a little, but I left them there anyway....and then returned less than 10 minutes later after talking to a friend that assured me that no, these things were not ok and I was not overreacting.

Anyway, all that to say drop in centers are out for me right now. Enrolling in preschool is out. Does anyone have any other suggestions for how we could use these funds up? I hate for them to go to waste.