My SiL was scrambling to get a consolidated with a lower rate about two months ago.

Yeah. I think the deadline was July 6 or something.

Gronk. Need to pack.

Olivia is only 8 months, right? She seems very mobile. Casper was only able to sit and fall over a lot, and kind of scoot backwards and get stuck under furniture, at that age.

My dogs killed a bird in our house this morning. I have no idea how it got in. It was so cute and little. The only good things was it was just feathers, no guts.

....Holy crap, there's another one. IT started flying around as I was typing above. The dogs are outside - now I just have to get this oune out of the house.

Olivia is only 8 months, right? She seems very mobile. Casper was only able to sit and fall over a lot, and kind of scoot backwards and get stuck under furniture, at that age.

Ayup. And it's scary! When she started crawling over a month ago I wasn't too worried. But then she started pulling up on everything and toppling over stuff and climbing on top of Owen. She pulls herself into standing a lot. She's way more mobile than Owen was at the same age. It's not right, I tell ya! I thought I had more time with less mobility.

Some of it is her individual development but I think she also gets more opportunity to explore on her own and has Owen as an example. I was so worried about him being on the floor, that he spent a lot more time in the exersaucer, etc. Since everything is still baby proofed, it's easier to let Liv go on the ground and she's making the most of her time.

Speaking of the kids--they're done with breakfast and we've got to get dressed and get to toddler zone.

Okay, the dead bird has been cleaned up. The live bird has been shooed out the front door. I hope there are no more birds!

eta: oh, and Ellie thought the bird in the house was really, really cool!

I'm surprised your rate on your loans is that high. You should be able to do better than that. Unless you have no other debt, I'm not sure that's the greatest use of your money.

Let's not even discuss the 8.5% rate my student loan is at. And I can't do a GODDAMN thing about it.

PC, if you are on the fence about the student loan, I'd do one of the following things: do the pay-big-chunks every once in a while, or step up the monthly payment thing. That way you can continue to have some savings, some good debt (which is handy for other bigger loans) and write off the interest on your taxes, which is in fact the bomb diggety.

Personally, I'd love to get my student loans paid off so I could sink that $600/month into savings or my mortgage )or to cancel out an inevitable future car loan payment), but I have other good debt (the mortgage) so it's a little different for me. Also, I have student loan fatigue, having dealt with them for 10 years already.

P-C, a couple thoughts on your finances.

First, you're doing very well. People at your stage of life are more likely to be worrying about how to pay the rent than whether to use savings to pay off debt completely. So feel good about yourself for having that kind of problem.

On whether to pay off, I'm going to take a bit of a contrarian view. It's a very good idea to have some savings as a fallback in case of emergencies. The conventional wisdom is to have at least 3-6 months' expenses socked away (my goal is to have at least 6 paychecks, or 12 weeks' take-home pay, which is more than 3 months' expenses). So I'd suggest that you not pay off the student loan if it takes your savings below that level.

Can't argue with the folks encouraging you to look at consolidation or other options that may reduce the interest rate. But I'll add that you can pay down the principal without paying off completely. Either in a lump sum or by adding a little something extra every month. (We do the latter with our mortgage -- it's surprising how fast the benefits show up on monthly statements!)

Finally, a subject that neither you nor anyone else raised, but it crossed my mind. How well are your savings working for you? I recently moved a fair amount of my liquid reserve (that 3-6 months expenses I was talking about above) from a bank account paying 0.2% to a bank account paying over 4%. Same safety, big difference in return. (A short-term corporate bond mutual fund is a little riskier -- but not a lot -- and can also offer decent return.)

On a similar topic, if you have your liquid reserve in place, you might want to look at investing with a longer timeframe in mind. I'm not giving any advice on specifics, but if you want to look in that direction, find a copy of Investing for Dummies, Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, or the like.

P-C, I'd look at consolidating. My student loan was somewhere in the 4% range, but when I took out a Parent Plus loan for my daughter that loan was in the 7% range. I was able to consolidate the second loan with the first loan and get a 4.75% interest rate on the total. You can really save some money that way.

PC, I will second what Fred Pete says, right across the board.