3-paycheck month

Like many others, I get paid on a biweekly basis - every other Friday. My paycheck tends to vary quite a bit, based on how many hours I work, so I estimate what I'll make and then set the upcoming month's budget accordingly.

Since there are 52 weeks in a year (so 26 pay periods), but only 12 months (with the typical month having only 2 pay periods), twice a year I get a third paycheck. This year, the third check happens to be in July, so that'll be a nice chunk of extra money.

I'd really love to take that extra money and go on a vacation, or use it to help pay down credit card debt, but I've got a $2000 college tuition bill that will be due in August... the extra check won't cover the tuition, but it will make a substantial dent.

Initially I'd looked into getting student loans to pay for tuition, but the interest rate on federal Direct graduate student loans sucks. It's at 6.8%, and is fixed at that for a few more years (it used to be that student loan interest rates would reset every July 1st, but the feds changed that a few years ago). Since the interest rates on my credit card balances are generally lower than that (averaging around 6%, thanks to many low-APR balance transfer offers over the past few years), it doesn't make sense to take out student loans just so that the credit cards can be paid off a few months sooner (when in the end, I'd end up paying slightly more in accumulated interest, plus origination fees for the loan).