Selling The Van

We're going to have to sell our van to get into a house. My mom, of all people, is upset at me about this. She is of the opinion that I will be unable to live without the van. Believe me, I would love to not have to live without the van. In fact if I had to pick one of our vehicles to get rid of, it would be FH's old car. But unfortunately I don't get to pick. The van is the one that we still owe money on, and we have to get rid of the debt or we won't even qualify for a loan, not to mention being able to afford the higher house payment in Salt Lake City without a cost-of-living pay raise. If we could sell FH's car and pay off the van with that, it would be better; but unfortunately we'd have to sell not only the car but our furniture and my grandmother's piano to pay it off. The only way we can raise that kind of money (other than selling everything else) is to sell the van, which blue-books for slightly more than we owe on it, or to somehow come up with $4000 in a budget already stretched razor-thin. I'm teaching a class this summer for $3200, but we need that money for the down payment. And we have to buy-- we can't afford to rent, because even a thousand-square-foot apartment in gang-land costs double what we're paying here and more than the mortgage on a house in gang-land.

If we could have put this move off for nine months or a year, it would be better, but that would put us moving in the middle of the school year, and I'm really concerned about Sonshine. He's starting Kindergarten and he's so worried about making friends and being able to handle the workload. Having the move on top of that is a lot for him and some days he's overwhelmed. I don't know how much harm it would do to him emotionally and educationally to yank him out of school after a couple of months and put him in a new school. We could do it, and that would put us in a position to keep our van because I could teach in Fall semester as I had planned. But my son is more important to me than a van, so we're moving in August.

It seems like only deus ex machina could save our van now. A second class to teach would enable us to sell the car instead, but there are currently no available classes. A dollar-down VA loan would have the same effect because it would free up the down-payment money. I don't really have any very old and wealthy relatives who might die and leave me something, with the possible exception of my grandpa (but it wouldn't surprise me if he left his entire estate to the Republican Party). Even Summerfest, grand as it is, could not possibly produce enough revenue to save the van. So we're just going to have to do without, no matter how hard it is. But if you have any creative ideas how I might come up with the money, please put them in the comments.