may tuition update

may was a long month. a very long month for this girl. i think may always seems long, every year. between spring busyness [let me hear you shout weddings!], general anticipation for summer, and the whole 31 day thing, it's just long. add working more than ever, teaching 37 kids for three days, and waiting for some very important news all month to those and you'll get a very. tired. lisagrace.

i could go on about how stressful life has been this past month, but i don't want to bore you. oh, and the important news? look for that in the next post. and no, for the last time, i'm not pregnant! : )

but hey! it's june. and all of the above has been resolved, so life is on the up and up.

because of lots of extra work for me [and triple paycheck month-love those!] and bryan starting his job at fareway, we set a hefty savings goal of $1,200.00. i'm happy to say we did that and $17.95 more! less than 75% to go!

tuition for 2011-2012 school year: $9,654.00
savings at the end of may: $2,517.95
difference: $7,136.05
percentage saved: 26.08%
percentage left to save: 73.92%

if you have a little extra time, here's a funny student loan story, this is why i'm so glad God has given us so much wisdom with our finances. they make it so easy to take out more than you need in student loans!

at the end of april, we officially filed the paperwork to apply for $5,500 worth of unsubsidized stafford loans. we're certain we won't need any more than that for the upcoming school year and are hoping we don't need any of it, obviously, but it's a just-in-case precaution. we were approved for quite a bit more than that, but we were careful to cancel all the other loans. when you fill out your paperwork, they automatically assume you want the maximum amount you were approved for so you have to cancel the ones you don't want. isn't that silly?

anyway, a couple weeks ago, we got a check in the mail. a $6,200.00 check. just a check that said something about a refund on the memo, no note, no explanation, just a big fat check. we've never taken out student loans before, so i thought, maybe we're getting our loan for next fall early, but why and why so much? if it wasn't for the fall, then it was for this past year, and we didn't pay even close to that much with the scholarship that bryan got. why would we need more money after everything's done and paid for?

already long story short, i guess because we just filled out our loan paperwork, it activated a student loan we were approved for last year and they sent us a check! while buying a boat was tempting, we took that check straight to the financial offices and straightened it out. we didn't want to owe that much money later. : )