See Jane Get Rich

Today, I logged into my bank account to find that my account balance jumped by $4,000.   “Whoa!  What happened?!” I asked myself.  As I quickly scanned my bank account transactions I saw a refund from my law school in the amount of $4,000.  I then quickly logged into my student account to review account charges for Spring 2010 and under credits there is a credit under “outside scholarship $4,000.”   

 I had an outside scholarship that paid for $4k of my tuition for Spring 2009 and I used another $4k for my Fall 2009 tuition.  I found the terms of the scholarship and it states:

 The $4,000.00 scholarship is renewable for the third year of law school (except in the event of unusual circumstances, determined in the discretion of the firm, that may involve the Scholar’s academic performance or conduct subsequent to the award….)

 It seems I was wrong in my interpretation in thinking $4k was just for the third year as a whole.  The scholarship must have renewed again for the Spring semester since I still meet the requirements.  I paid my tuition somewhat early before the scholarship was applied to my tuition and I believe this triggered the refund.  

This brings down my total all time out-of-pocket law school tuition expenses from $29,377.50 to $25,377.50 and my Spring 2010 tuition from $8,777.50 to $4,777.50.   

 An unexpected $4,000 is the best way to start off the week!

Last year I made a big fat mistake by paying $310 for my tax preparation.  This year I did my taxes using H&R Block’s free tax prep software for my federal and then paid $10.55 for DC and home state.  It wasn’t worth it to pay $10.55 each for the home state one but it did save me a whole lot of time so I forked over the money.  It feels so good to be done.

Federal $6,834

DC: $921

Home State: $24

Cost: -$21.10

Total = $7,757.90