OK, so I read through your post a few times and you are correct I was misunderstanding. It seems I have been making several mistakes, all the numbers I posted were the board on its own, nothing plugged into it (no LCD or other forms of resistance) Where I was making a mistake is in my understanding of the Vin pin and its purpose. I had the 12v source connected to the buck converter which was connected into another barrel cord plugging into the arduino via the female barrel power port on the arduino, not the Vin as I should have. The second mistake I was making is in the voltage of the buck converter, all by itself the output reads just over 5v which is what I expected based on adafruits description. I understand that I will need more than this coming into the arduino to power the LCD but I am not quite sure how or if I can alter the buck converter to supply this. Thank you for your help so far, I really appreciate it