Officially Unemployed and Poor (Sorta)

Well it was certainly a wake-up call. The very first day of my unemployment, my bank account went negative. Ouch. It was really just an accounting error (I forgot about a payment I'd set up), but it really hit home the fact that I no longer have a salary. I know I will have loans, but I don't actually have any of that money yet, and I won't for several weeks. So now that I actually have some time to enjoy myself, my funds to do so are quite limited!

And as I've mentioned, we are contemplating borrowing less than Wharton's budget for first-years since my husband's salary will likely cover a lot of the room and board expenses. It's really hard to decide how much to borrow. I want to take advantage of these two years as much as possible, and there are a lot of expenses associated with that (i.e. social activities, travel, club membership, business wardrobe, etc). But at the same time, I don't want to live too far beyond our means, because that will just cost us more in interest in the long run. My husband is lucky enough to have never been in any kind of debt besides our mortgage, so all of these dollar signs associated with my education are pretty scary. We both know it will pay off in the long run, but it's not like I'm planning to go into investment banking or consulting so my pay off period is going to be longer than many of my classmates. I guess we both just need to get over that now. This is about my education, not everyone else's. Right ...

I keep thinking back to a mantra that was heard over and over from the students that hosted Welcome Weekend. "It all works out in the end." They said this so often, about so many subjects, including class waivers, tuition, technology, learning teams, academics, feeling overwhelmed, etc, that it started to become funny. But they all said it really is true. So I will go with it. It will all work out in the end ....