Creative financing

If you own a home, you might be able to forgo the Graduate PLUS loan and take out an equity loan to help pay your tuition bill.

The upsides:

• You don't have to pay a 3% loan origination fee - Ouch.
  
• A lower interest rate - in my case I'm saving 3.25%
  
• Home equity loans less than $100K are tax deductible - Sweet.
  

The downsides:

• Reduces available equity in your home
  
• No grace period before you being paying back the loan (although you might be able to get away with paying only the interest while in school)
• Interest is not fixed - Read: it may go higher than the rate of the PLUS loan
  

In the beginning

There was time for blogging. I don't know how successful I'll be at chronicling my experiences as a first year law student (I'm now a One L!) with a husband and a kid once school actually starts but I'm going to try to do that here.

I have received the official reading list and made my book purchases from amazon.com. I was quite pleased to find that several of the books that have already arrived are rather small in stature. Had they all been 300+ page books I'm not sure I would have stood a chance in getting through them. But these seem okay and so I am pleased to throw the reading list in the 'Not to Worry' pile, thereby leaving my anxiety free to be placed in a more worthy spot.

D has also pointed me in the direction of a paper by Orin Kerr (of Volokh blog fame) that is meant to teach new students how to read a legal opinion. Sweet.