Oh! I Almost Forgot!

Our $8000 refund check from the fertility clinic arrived in the mail yesterday!

As it turns out, Shrike actually did not have insurance coverage for her testing, so we ended up having to pay about $3500 for it (!) but that still leaves us a net refund of $4500. 

Of course, the whole point of paying the $8000 was to cover testing that wasn't covered by insurance, so they didn't have to give us back anything at all. 

Originally, I thought we'd use the refund to pay off the home equity loan, but after having to pay for all that testing, plus some other stuff, plus additional upcoming Peeper-related expenses we now owe more than that on it Of course, we could pay it down alot, but would still owe for quite a while, and would still have the $100/month payment. 

However, we only owe owed about $7300 on my car, and we're we were paying $170/month on it. 

So, we paid off the car today!!!

We debated about which way to go with it, but decided that was the best choice, overall. 

At the moment, the interest rates on the two loans are the same (5%) although the home equity is likely to go up at some point. 

(It's prime - 1, with a floor of 5% and prime is at, I think, 5.25 now, so it won't change til prime goes up an entire percentage point, which doesn't look to be happening real soon.)

So, in the long run, it will probably cost us a bit more than if we'd put all $8000 on the home equity, but given that I won't be working full time after Peeper is born, getting rid of that $170/month payment seemed like the way to go.

So, the bank may still own our kid, but the car is now ours!