Cash Plan for Fall Tuition

Our youngest daughter is in college and will be going back to live in the dorm this fall. Classes start a week earlier than last year and the semester ends the day before Thanksgiving. The exciting part financially is that the Board of Regents did freeze the cost of tuition and housing for the upcoming school year. It is still higher than we paid last year because our daughter bumped into the higher tuition differential for engineering majors, but it would have been even higher if they didn't make that freeze. We are grateful for that and for her continued scholarship that is $2,250 a semester.

It takes diligence and effort to pay tuition in cash.

After the scholarship we will owe $9701.50 for the fall tuition, room and board.

Here's where we found the cash:

Saved $500/mo x 7 months $3,500
Spring housing refund $2,291
Tax Refund 2019 $1,308
ESA Funds $2,602.50

We bought a couple used textbooks this summer that I purchased out of current income. She has a few others that are immediate access books, technically ebooks, and ones that are loaded into her account and she is automatically billed for them because she is enrolled in the class. Those books will add another $200. I expect this will be bill by the University in September, which I will pay from current income also.

After this semester, assuming her plans do not change and she stays on track, we will have just three more semesters to pay! We think we will use her portion of the Post 911 GI Bill for the upcoming spring and fall of 2021. It feels like light at the end of the tunnel since we starting paying college expenses for our oldest daughter in the fall of 2015.

Are you saving for college, paying for college, or changing plans for college? Tell me about it in the comments!