I'm stressed. There are so many things up in the air and I'm getting my monthly desire to do something drastic with our finances. Orientation for pharmacy school is on Friday...and next Tuesday. We won't find out this week if we will even be stationed here or have to move. I'm hoping and praying that will we stay in Florida, and I'm working with that assumption, but it's possible that I'll have to withdraw from pharmacy school and move to Washington or Hawaii.
Assuming we stay here I'll be taking out $16,000 in loans this year. Since we don't know how much money I will actually need for school and how much DH's salary can cover, I'm taking all they'll give me. I'm assuming that subsequent years I'll be able to take out less. I haven't gotten word about scholarships yet, and I'm hoping I get some, but I don't want to count on those either. Looking over the loan stuff I've pretty much decided that I'm going to pay the interest on the unsubsidized loans while I'm still in school. We should be able to handle it, and it will decrease the amount I'll have to pay back.
We have been saving for a down payment on a house and for retirement and our EF is fully funded. So I feel like we have a lot of cash available to us right now. Since things are so up in the air, I like knowing that. However, about once a month I get the urge to drain our down payment account and use it to pay off the cars. It would completely pay off my car (5.99%) and pay of about half of DH's car (3.59%). I calculated that if I paid off my car it would save about $300 in interest payments. $300 isn't anything to shake a stick at, but I'm not sure it is enough to motivate me to do something that drastic either. Especially since at the end of the year that 7-10,000 could be used to pay off student loans, put towards retirement, or keep for its intended purpose of a down payment.
We have a plan to pay off the cars, and our goal is to have them paid off by December 2008. Until we know more about school and possibly a house (although that is pretty unlikely) I think I'll just continue the way things have been going.
Getting antsy
August 14th, 2007 at 03:38 pm
August 14th, 2007 at 11:12 pm 1187129557