In the three weeks since school has started I've been feeling so overwhelmed and have not had time for anything other than studying!! Having my in-laws in town this weekend and last haven't helped either since that means I've had to cram all school stuff during the week.

Anyway, I've had zero time for things that I have previously enjoyed like couponing and tracking our finances. Thankfully there haven't been too many good deals out there otherwise I'd either have to miss out or try to cram it in. Our finances are sort of working out as expected, but I'm not able to track and monitor it as much as I'd like.

School is also much more expensive than I was expecting. I was expecting for tuition and stuff, but now there are various club dues and eating out! I'm planning on joining a couple of different clubs and with dues being about $50, that quickly adds up to $100-150.

Grabbing lunch at the hospital is about $3, but if we go somewhere else it will easily add up quickly. Our schedule is so varied that some days we will have to eat at the hospital, and I can probably take my lunch most of those days. However other days it makes more sense for people to go out to lunch, and it would be harder to bring my lunch those days. Especially this semester when I'm trying to meet people and build relationships I'll probably go out to eat more than in future terms. We'll see though!

Argh, school loans are so hard. Actually the loans itself isn't difficult, it's just that my personal situation that is making it so complicated.

I currently have accepted all the loans they will give me. (For the year: $8,500 subsidized, $16,700 unsub.) As of this moment DH and I have a "profit" of roughly 1,000 a month, which we have been using to pay off our cars and put towards our Roths. If life were simple this would mean that we would only need to take out $12,000 worth of loans each year to cover tuition.

However, life isn't that simple for us. Starting in November DH will be moving. So we will suddenly have two sets of rent and utilities to pay for. I will be downsizing to a smaller apartment to save money, but our finances will still change. Exactly how much, we don't know. And from prior experience it will be a couple of months after the move before things settle down and we can get an accurate picture of our spending habits.

To give you some more background the student loan will be at 6.8%, my car loan is at 5.99% and DH's car loan is at 3.59%. We currently have a decent amount of money in cash (earning 5.0%) between our EF and down payment funds. In theory we could pay for a year of school flat out--but then we'd be broke.

With so much up in the air this is what I'm thinking:
*Take all of the student loans they'll give me for Fall term.
*Pay off the interest each month.
*After paying tuition any extra money will be put in our savings account (5%).
*Try to have us only live off of DH's paycheck and not touch the loan money.
*Adjust and see if less money can be taken out for Spring term.

From there things get a little more murky.
*Should we continue to put our monthly "profit" towards our cars and retirement?
*Should that money instead be diverted towards the student loan?
*Should I even hold onto that extra loan money or should we use our EF/Down payment money to cover any potential gap?

Any insight or opinions would be greatly appreciated. I'm a little surprised I'm having a hard time with this. I think it's because the completely fiscally responsible thing (avoid all debt like the plague and pay it off ASAP) is in conflict with the plans we had (pay off the cars early, save for retirement, and take out loans for school expenses).

I am applying to pharmacy school this year and I got my first acceptance letter!! Yay!

Now comes the hard part. That school wants a $750 non-refundable deposit to hold my spot. Normally this wouldn't be a problem but I have no idea if I'm going to be able to go to their school.

My husband is in the Navy and there are currently 4 places (all corners of the US) that he could be stationed. We won't know which one it will be for a couple of months. On top of that he'd be stationed in Maine and the school is in New Hampshire so we wouldn't be able to live together anyway...but we'd be 1-2 hours away.

I'm leaning towards just paying the deposit as a safety net, cause I'd hate to end up in Maine and not going to pharmacy school. (I will be receiving $10K from my father's life insurance policy that I'm putting toward school, so the actual amount of the deposit isn't much of a problem).

My acceptance to this school does bode well for my acceptance to the Florida school. That is really our first choice, for him to get stationed here in Florida and me go to school here. This would mean no moving (yay) and we get to actually live together (double yay)!! Now we just hope that the Navy and the pharmacy school gods all agree that we stay here in Florida.