Financial Expedition

I decided to start college again at the push of my husband and my grandma. I didn't like my job at the time, but I needed to provide for my family. I decided to go back to school for dental hygiene. I have already spent about $2500 on pre-requisite classes, and have about $15,000 in classes to go. During the course they don't recommend working more than 15 hours a week. I'm not sure how this will work out, having kids, trying to work and going back to school all at once. When I was in college before I just took care of myself and it wasn't too hard to maintain all my responsibilities.  Now going in to college again, I have car payments, a mortgage, old student loans, daycare, and all the things that cost raising two growing kids and then some.  I need to make sure that our household can take the hit of my not working 40 hours a week by the time I go back to school. I'm sure I'll take out student loans, but I don't want to go in debt otherwise, so at the end I can pay back school as soon as I can.

My plan is to pay off all my credit cards, and my smaller student loan by then end of 2013. I will then start working on cutting down on my car loan. This will leave me with the car insurance for around $130, $60 for water, gas in my car (eek! who knows how much that will be in two years?), and maybe child care depending on my class schedule and how mature my kids are in two years.

I need to cut up my credit cards for once, and cancel a lot of them since they always send you new ones every year it seems, just in case you forgot you had their card.  I need to make sure that I don't go over board on budget during Christmas.  This whole plan just frightens me because it seems impossible. I'm not good with budget and not getting freaked out about money. When I freak out that I'm going to be short on cash, I turn to my credit cards to use them as a buffer.  I will need to make sure to build savings to prevent myself from turning to my credit cards when I feel weak. I just hope in the end that I have decided to do the right thing for myself and my family.