High anxiety

I think you have a couple options.

1) Go to school full time while working. This would be hard because you have kids, but sometimes it is doable.

2) Go to school part time so that you can work at least part time. School will take longer, but this may result in less financial burden.

3) Private loans. I'm very hesitant to suggest this option, but it is an option. Discover offers student loans that cover cost of living and you can choose to sign up for a fixed rate. I believe APR is around 5 or 6%. Sally Mae also has a similar loan option. Again, this option is not at the top of my list, but I believe private loans can work out when done responsibly.

By the way, congratulations on making it into a program! I'm sure you've worked incredibly hard to come this far! If you've made it to this point, I do believe you can succeed in nursing school. My friends who have already completed their programs have told me that if you're smart enough to nail the pre reqs, you're smart enough to do well in nursing school; you'll just need to prioritize time management.

Good luck!

This website may have some helpful money saving tips you have not thought of.

YouCanDealWithIt.com

Learn the difference between "need" and "want," and make sure your children understand it too. I used to say, "I don't have money for that," which was the truth. I might have had money in my wallet, but ... not for that.

Frequent garage sales, second-hand stores, and church rummage sales for toys, clothes, and other expensive things.

Cook your food ahead in large batches and freeze it; it's a lot cheaper than prepared foods, and healthier, and the kids can help, and the time you'll save in cooking you can use in studying.

When the grandparents ask, "What do you want for his birthday?" for the kids, tell them, "Shoes. Books. A new winter coat. A special day with you." When grandma takes you to the shoe store it can be a real treat! And the kid will be wearing that coat a lot longer than she'll be playing with that stupid toy. "My nana got it for me!"

Take your family recreation in free places, parks, state forests, and the like. Fly kites. Pack sandwiches and tapwater in reusable bottles rather than buy coffee, pizza, or McDonald's while you go out.

Buy generics for everything-- shampoo, laundry soap, peanut butter, cereal ...

You'd be truly astonished at how much money you can save on these things.

More?

Ok, I am a mother of 3 and married. My husband works while I go to school full time. Eons ago we sat down and decided together that this would be our best course of action for our family (we were both paramedic/ firefighters). Here is how we have made it so far:

1) We took a free Dave Ramsey class (we could not afford the tuition so our church let us take it for free, as we have contributed much in the past to funds for families that need assistance) I will note here that paying for or attending a Dave Ramsey course is not completely necessary as you can get all the information for free in some way or another.

2) We created a general budget TOGETHER. It took a lot of being honest with ourselves about what we really "needed" and what was actually just a "want badly" From there, I rework the budget each month, and any major changes I run by my husband

3) We are thrifty. We do not buy anything we don't NEED, and when we do purchase, we save up if it is big, and try to buy used if possible. Food=Aldi's for items acceptable, scanning ads for sales. This also means saying NO to each other and ourselves when we want to eat out. We agreed ahead of time on this.

4) We live (all five of us) in a three bedroom, two bath duplex. We do not pay for expensive cable or luxuries like that. My office is in a small basement/laundry room area. We got creative with storage and space use.

5) We sold everything we didn't absolutely need. This saves us space and made us some money for emergency fund.

There is more, I'm sure, but I can't think of it all right now. Really, this didn't all happen over night. It took the last two years to develope and feel our way through this. New ideas came up as we went on how to save money. Is it a sacrifice to live like this? Sure. Is it worth it? Well, for us it is. That's why we are doing it. We try to keep our eyes on the prize: when I graduate I will be bringing in at least as much as my husband is now... and we will have ONLY school debt at that point. That is because in all this, we are finding ways to pay off other debt. We are almost there, and will even be starting on school loans before I graduate. In the end, it will be worth it for us.

Thank you everyone for your responses. We already live a frugal life, so that is why this is so scary. I should probably add my husbands income is commission based. We are going to cut the cable off, get cheaper cell phones, and have a yard sale because we have so much stuff we don't need. Ahhh why didn't I just go back to school when I was younger!

I am in the same spot you are. Actually, I have felt more anxiety over the past few weeks than I have ever felt my entire life. But my plan of attack is to stop paying for things we don't need (no one will be home, so why pay for cable), and to apply for every scholarship I can find. I know it is going to be hard over the next few years, but if it is important enough we will find a way. I also chose to think of it as a way to show my kids that sometimes you really have to work hard to get where you want. Good luck to you!

We are cutting off our cable too! The kids watch Netflix more than anything so it's a pointless expense at this point. We also want to shop around for cheaper a cheaper cell phone provider.

Books from the library are cheaper than Netflix. You can have family reading time for an hour after supper- you study, they read. It's better for developing brains than screen time anyway. It's a good habit for them to get into, and with you sitting there with your book, something they see you valuing.

My 9 year old is loves reading. He reads on a middle school level and reads everyday :) My 3 year old isn't too into sitting having me read to him yet or looking at books himself. The main purpose of canceling the $83 a month cable is we don't use it enough so we can put that money to use elsewhere. We use the $8.99 a month Netflix more...including my husband and myself.

I second taking the Dave Ramsey course. I am completely debt free and I own my house outright and my car. I paid cash for my car. My ex-husband and I did Dave Ramsey for several years. I also agree with GrnTea to learn the difference between need and want. I have a friend that was always borrowing money from me to pay her basic bills. She always had this huge sob story. I would give her money. I didn't want to see her kids living on the streets. Then a couple of days later I would see her post pics on Facebook going to a movie or eating at a restaurant. It was so completely frustrating to me. I finally cut her off.

I budget everything. I am not one of those extreme couponers. That is like a full time job in itself and those people never seem to buy stuff they need. I'm referring to that show. I'm always like, where is their meat to make dinner? They can't live off of candy, chips, and 2 liters of pop!! And they have these big stock piles of useless stuff they don't use. But hey, they only paid $20 for it. To me, they just wasted $20.

But I do look for the sales. Usually the grocery stores have really good specials. When they do, I stock up. It takes some planning, but it can be done. Water, soda, cheese, paper towels, toilet paper, vegetables, pasta, orange juice, there are usually big sales somewhere. Another big one is frozen pizzas. My kid loves totinos party pizzas. I get them for a dollar. One week Kraft cheese was $1.99. It's usually $4. I use the mozzerella and cheddar for tacos. I bought a bunch. Boxes of pasta when they go on sale for a dollar. It truly is worth to look at the ads. I also buy from a grocery store that saves me money on gas. A couple of weeks ago I had a dollar off each gallon of gas. I filled my tank for less than $30.

There are also lots of apps on saving money. You can also look at blogs. I also have Netflix at my house. It was cheaper to put that in my sons room over cable. During those years that my ex and I did Dave Ramsey we did not ever go out. Our focus was getting things paid off. No vacations, no movies nights out. It was difficult at first, then you get used to living this new way and you tell yourself it's only for a certain period of time. Three years will fly by fast. And I can tell you there is no better feeling in life than being debt free.

You will find though some of those habits will stick. That's a good thing. But I can go out now and do some fun things with my son because I am debt free. But I'm still cheap when shopping for food and going out for dinner. I do lots of things myself now, like washing my car and cleaning the inside. I don't want to pay someone to do that. If something in my house breaks, a lot of times I can go to Youtube and fix it myself. My washer had an error code on it this past weekend. My boyfriend and I looked it up and had it running again in 30 minutes. He told me in the beginning to call a repair guy. I was like no, I can do this myself and save me a couple of hundred dollars and we did. He looked at me and told me I was right and he's going to start doing that. Lol.

I second taking the Dave Ramsey course. I am completely debt free and I own my house outright and my car. I paid cash for my car. My ex-husband and I did Dave Ramsey for several years. I also agree with GrnTea to learn the difference between need and want. I have a friend that was always borrowing money from me to pay her basic bills. She always had this huge sob story. I would give her money. I didn't want to see her kids living on the streets. Then a couple of days later I would see her post pics on Facebook going to a movie or eating at a restaurant. It was so completely frustrating to me. I finally cut her off.

I budget everything. I am not one of those extreme couponers. That is like a full time job in itself and those people never seem to buy stuff they need. I'm referring to that show. I'm always like, where is their meat to make dinner? They can't live off of candy, chips, and 2 liters of pop!! And they have these big stock piles of useless stuff they don't use. But hey, they only paid $20 for it. To me, they just wasted $20.

But I do look for the sales. Usually the grocery stores have really good specials. When they do, I stock up. It takes some planning, but it can be done. Water, soda, cheese, paper towels, toilet paper, vegetables, pasta, orange juice, there are usually big sales somewhere. Another big one is frozen pizzas. My kid loves totinos party pizzas. I get them for a dollar. One week Kraft cheese was $1.99. It's usually $4. I use the mozzerella and cheddar for tacos. I bought a bunch. Boxes of pasta when they go on sale for a dollar. It truly is worth to look at the ads. I also buy from a grocery store that saves me money on gas. A couple of weeks ago I had a dollar off each gallon of gas. I filled my tank for less than $30.

There are also lots of apps on saving money. You can also look at blogs. I also have Netflix at my house. It was cheaper to put that in my sons room over cable. During those years that my ex and I did Dave Ramsey we did not ever go out. Our focus was getting things paid off. No vacations, no movies nights out. It was difficult at first, then you get used to living this new way and you tell yourself it's only for a certain period of time. Three years will fly by fast. And I can tell you there is no better feeling in life than being debt free.

You will find though some of those habits will stick. That's a good thing. But I can go out now and do some fun things with my son because I am debt free. But I'm still cheap when shopping for food and going out for dinner. I do lots of things myself now, like washing my car and cleaning the inside. I don't want to pay someone to do that. If something in my house breaks, a lot of times I can go to Youtube and fix it myself. My washer had an error code on it this past weekend. My boyfriend and I looked it up and had it running again in 30 minutes. He told me in the beginning to call a repair guy. I was like no, I can do this myself and save me a couple of hundred dollars and we did. He looked at me and told me I was right and he's going to start doing that. Lol.

Love this advice!!! I've been learning the difference between need and want, mainly because my boyfriend laughs at me when I buy senseless things. But I love the idea of not going out, I'm a hermit anyway, and save money that way. You have inspired me!