College Tuition Time of Year again

Well, it is that time of year again......no, I'm not rushing it, I'm talking about August...the time college starts again after summer break.

But right now is when the thoughts of paying the bills come to mind. I received the $17,500 (or so) bill from Pratt and it is due by August 24th. I have not yet received the bill from the University of Tennessee (UTK), but I'm sure it is "in the mail".

In the long term, Cheryl and I had prepared to pay these by saving money, and I have that fact placed solidly in my head.....but still, when that bill shows up with all those zeros......it is a bit of a sticker shock.

I just don't have a checking or savings account with that kind of bread in it......so it's always an investment transfer, which sort of puts it all into perspective. I normally slap it down on my AMEX for a month so that I can use that time to transfer the money from a mutual fund. (and get the total costs figured so that I only do the transfer once)

This year has the added complication of Kristen transfering to UTK and Kimberly moving off-campus to an apartment. All of those costs are "new" and as of this moment, not fully understood. We had the loans and monthly payment plans figured out for Hofstra, and that is all up in the air for UTK as of now.

The other problem is that it looks as thought the loans taken while at Hofstra basically "come due" 6 months after she leaves the school because the loans appear to be connected to the school and not the student. (I guess this keeps people from going on and on as "professional students" and never paying off their loans) I have no clue as to how much those loans might be...I think they were small though....like $3500 per semester.

So writing this is probably less interesting for you the reader, but it helps me get my mind around the money that I will have to be paying out in the next month or two. At least it will
cause me to go and look at my investment accounts and get a mental sense of where I will have to "dip in" to get this money.

Education is a good investment......I know that, so I'm not in the least upset. Also, Cheryl and I had planned this pretty well, so other than a few small expenses we never thought of, everything has been OK to plan so far.