Ha ha! My karma got me! Just when I got a bit cocky that things were all set and on auto-pilot and I didn't need to think about money, things have changed up a bit.

I am on pace to meet two targeted goals: $2000 tuition payment for DD's high school (leaving a $1,750 balance to be paid in six months) on July 20th, and the final property tax payment of $2,270 due on 9/4.

Because I am a non-compensated volunteer (averaging 15 hours per week) in our parish's school and summer program we have received a $6,000 grant in tuition, leaving our balance of $1,606 which I can pay in whatever increments throughout the school year.

DH will be entering the diaconite program which will bring additional grants next year so our tuition should actually be about the same, and that includes his share of tuition. He's confident about this, so I am supportive of it, it's in line with his personal goals and where he sees himself doing what he should be doing.

We had anticpated a refi of the mortgage on our primary residence, the goal was to the lower payment by several hundred dollars a month. We own our rental property outright, but because we did a bridge loan and when we couldn't sell, we put renters in. Consequently the bridge loan put a $250K lien against the property which is presently valued at $215K (was apparised at $330K when we moved in the first place). We can't sell because we would have to cough up the difference at closing. So our only real option we thought was to do the refi.

Our plans for the refi came to a screeching halt when we found that our loan to ratio value would require mortgage insurance (the value of our primary residence also really tanked in the several motnhs we were investing this).

So we'll plod along with the present mortgage payment.
It is do-able, the budget, though I will definitely need to put on the cape of judiciousness when it comes to spending,

My point of advice:

Last year I purchased two prepaid tuition plans for my daughters to attend the local community college. The coast is $3,200 per year. I'm thinking that I made an awful mistake in doing so. It is for basically for an associates degree or gen ed classes to tranfer to a different uni. My oldest daughter ended up with scholarships and grants for high school, which lead me to believe she'll be able to qualify for college. And I had the realizationt that she might want to go away to college. She might not, but maybe it isn't fair to land-lock her to MY plan. It is time to make the $3,200 payments ($1,600 x 2) which I incidentally can't afford to make.

Do I get out of the plan and transfer those funds to
the girls regular college savings account? The money that I should be paying into these plans covers about what our tuition is.

Help! What do you think? Am I missing the obvious? It appears that there is a 5% penalty on the $3,200 which we paid in (though there was a $500 incentive to start it in the first place).