Well, that's not 100% true. DD took a $3,750 loan but DW and I didn't need to borrow a penny to make the fall tuition payment ($15,135). Last year at this time, we borrowed $7,500 for the fall and another $7,500 for the spring. early on, I anticipated we'd have to do the same this year.
When I switched to working part time instead of per diem at the urgent care, that bumped up my income and we were able to start putting money into our savings account at a rate far greater than before. So I started realizing we probably wouldn't need to borrow another $15,000 but probably something less than that.
Fast forward to July and we had accumulated $8,000 in the savings account. We got an 2015 amended tax return refund of $1,400, a cash gift of $2,500 for our anniversary, and DD got a $3,000 scholarship check that we split with her, so another $1,500 for us. That gave us another $5,400. We were able to cover the remaining $1,700 just from current income bringing us up to that $15,135 figure.
Now the challenge is to see if we can save up another $15,000 in time for the spring tuition payment due at the end of December. That will be the FINAL tuition bill! If we can, that would be fantastic. If not, we are in the final stage of opening a HELOC so we will be able to dip into that if we need to.
Paid fall tuition with no loans!
July 30th, 2017 at 04:33 pm
July 30th, 2017 at 04:43 pm 1501433007
July 30th, 2017 at 07:06 pm 1501441618
July 30th, 2017 at 11:56 pm 1501459009
That's great. We didn't quite accomplish that. As I said, we borrowed 15K last year, though we already have that down to a $5,700 balance. It should be paid off by the end of the year. If we can come up with spring tuition without borrowing from the HELOC, we'll be college debt free when she graduates in May. If not, we may still have a few thousand outstanding but not more than that. We're currently able to throw about $3,000/month at college costs. That surplus might drop in October when I leave my practice but I can't be sure yet.
July 31st, 2017 at 02:22 pm 1501510969