On Friday my oldest daughter was awarded an $1,100 scholarship for a JC about 35 miles away. She’s changed her mind about moving to Chico and attending a local JC there. I’m not sure if she was looking for a way to opt out of moving to Chico or not. Maybe she actually put a budget together and figured out that she can’t afford both rent and eating. Now that she’s received this scholarship she’s decided that she needs to live at home. I’m not really sure what to make of her change of plans. I’m relieved and at the same time I’m hoping her staying doesn’t have anything to do with leaving her boyfriend.

The scholarship should pay for her unit fees and all her books for a whole year. She’s pretty excited about receiving it.

Now for the bad stuff. The JC that the scholarship is good at is about 35 miles away over twisty mountain roads. It actually takes an hour to drive so she’s looking at a two hour round trip commute on school days. In the winter there are days when chains are required, there are also days when there is extremely heavy fog on the mountain. There’s also the added mileage/wear & tear to her car and of course the ever increasing cost of fuel. I’ve decided to just stay out of it and only offer my motherly advice if I’m asked. You know what they say - pick and choose your battles.

I have to admit it, I’m thrilled she’s not leaving home. The thought of her moving out, being broke all the time and taking on unnecessary debt didn’t sit well with me at all. I also feel as though she’ll have a better chance of actually getting her RN if she can go to school full time and work part time.

The new Guinea Fowl are here! We had a great hatch! Our hatch rate was 83%, this early in the egg laying season, I was thinking I’d be lucky if we got 50%. We ended up hatching 13 keets. Aren’t they cute? If all survive, I’ll end up having 18 guinea’s. They are the best guard dogs ever and they eat gophers and snakes too.

Last night my husband BBQ’d some steaks. I had bought a whole chicken on sale for $0.88/# and I had him BBQ it. I then skinned it and shredded up the meat, added some BBQ sauce and now my kids are going to have BBQ’d chicken sandwiches for the next few days. I got the buns on sale for $1 a pack. So for about $7, plus stuff I already have on hand (tortilla chips, carrots, etc.) I’ll feed all four kids for three days - that’s about $0.58 each lunch. I’m so excited and they are all thrilled to have such a great lunch!

I’m still thinking about paying off all of our debt with my husbands 401K. It’s so tempting. My brain tells me it’s probably not the smartest thing to do but my heart tells me that we should do it. If we did go ahead and do this, we’d have enough cash flow to live credit card free, using only cash. Here’s my list of pros and cons.

PROS:
Freeing up $3,000 a month
Less daily stress
We could save money and go on a CASH paid vacation
We wouldn’t feel poor anymore
We could buy clothes and shoes for CASH and not be worried about making payments
We’d be living again, versus just barely getting by
My husband would be able to actually spend some of the money he’s worked so hard for

CONS:
We’re tapping from our future
Tax impact???

I’m sure I’ll be adding more to the list.

Update 4/23/08 - I spoke with my husband about my plan.  He’s already aware of the 10% penalty and the income taxes we’d owe on the money.  He’s not against the plan but he’s not 100% for it either.  He said we’d talk about it when he comes home from his business trip.

I’m looking for comments good or bad, I can take it.

I’m drowning in payments here, I won’t go into all the nasty details but there are many of them and they are killing me. I barely have anything left at the end of the month. So here’s what I’ve been thinking about doing. I’m just not sure it’s the correct thing to do. I want to ask my husband to cash in a 401K that he has that hasn’t done anything in years. It has $22,000 in it. I’d also like for him to sell this dump truck that we have that’s worth $5,000 and is never used. I’m thinking, after taxes I might have $20,000 and I could pay off two loans freeing up $600 a month. Is this a good idea or a bad one?

I’ve also been thinking about tapping my husbands big 401K he has a very large sum of money in there. What if we tapped that to pay off all our remaining debt? We would be taking 20% of his 401K. Is this a good idea or a horrible one? Is it even possible to do this?

If we went ahead with both these plans, we could be debt free (I’m guessing) in a month or two. I would also be freeing up over $3,000 a month, $36,000+ a year. We could max out his 401K contributions and put money into savings.

If you are reading this please leave a comment good or bad and don’t tell me what you think I want to hear, tell me what you really think, it will be appreciated more than you know.

Thanks in advance.

I did it, I cleared out my storage unit! I’m so darn proud of myself and my kids. This is a pretty big deal for us, the unit was packed with stuff. We did all the moving without any help from my husband, who promised me so many times he’d help out and then found something else he’d rather do. I’m not mad at him or anything, obviously cleaning out the unit was a low priority for him and a high priority for me.

The woman that works at the storage unit told me I’d be getting a refund check in the amount of $68 for the remaining month. Woo hoo!

I think I had that unit about 5 years at $128 a month, that’s $7,680 wasted. The stuff in there that I’ve decided to keep was worth about $2,000. I could just kick my own butt right now but whats done is done, oh well. I guess being in the storage unit business is very profitable?

I’ve been reading Dave Ramsey’s book, Financial Freedom and I’ve decided I need to beef up my emergency fund. I already have some money in a savings account but I’m thinking I should built it up a little so I have a little cushion in case when something comes up. So for the next few months I’ll be paying the minimum on my credit cards and putting some money in my savings account. With my credit card interest rates as low as they are now, after finance fees, I’ll still be paying off approximately $431 dollars of my debt per month. I should be able to put about $100 - $300 in my savings account per month. I’ll still be making progress towards becoming debt free and beefing up my savings account at the same time.

I know following this plan is going to set back my goal date of being credit card debt free but I’m also hoping that by doing this, should an emergency come up I won’t be reaching for my credit cards to help me out.