School Refund help!
For starters, I am a 22 year old female who made around $28,000 last year. My monthly expenses include rent and utilities (in an old home, so the utilities especially in the winter are not cheap), a car payment, a credit card payment, a cell phone payment, and miscellaneous expenses. I would elaborate on each, but this question deals specifically with my school financial aid refund check.
I enrolled in classes this past year, but don't have a solid idea of what I want to do. As I work full time, I didn't feel it was a good idea to take a full course load (also not my question ;)), and so I have recently been informed that I have an $875 refund available at my disposal.
The credit card: due to a series of unfortunate events, I accrued $4000 of credit card debt at a high interest rate (think upwards of 20%). By the start of this year, I had worked it down to around d $3200. I no longer use this credit card.
After filing my taxes, I used my entire tax return to pay $800 off on the card, and intend to try to pay at least double the minimum to continue to chip away at the debt. The process is slow, but it is as much as I can do with my other bills.
My end goal is to file for a loan through my bank when my credit score raises around 50 more points, which will of course cause a small negative hit, and use that loan to pay off the credit card, as itwill have a much lower interest rate and be paid off at least 3x faster than if I were to keep paying my current interest rate.
Now my question, I was planning to take some classes over the summer. My school refund would cover these... or it would be another $800 payment to go towards my credit card. I am going to be eligible for financial aid for next year's classes, so that's not a concern.
Should I use the refund for more classes and keep making steady c.c. payments? Or should I apply it to my credit card and take the summer off, continuing my studies in the fall? Or should I do a split-some classes and some c.c. payment?
Help please!
Posted Feb 21, 2016, 8:45 PM UTC