Trying To Get My Wife To Go To Law School ??

Q: I'm looking for some advice to help convince my wife to go to law school. She is 35 years old and has a master's degree in education. She's been a school teacher for nearly 10 years. She has several family members who are lawyers and has always felt law was in her "blood," and she feels at times she is wasting her time in education. To be frank, I get tired of her telling me all the time she wishes she had gone to law school. :-) I've tried to convince her to go back, but she's worried we could never afford it. I'm wondering how others in similar situations got by? We have no kids and we are about halfway through a 15 year mortgage. The nearest law school is some 2 hours away so not only would her going to school require her to quit her job, but I'd likely have to put her up in an apartment during the school year. I make decent enough money, but not enough where I can manage our mortgage by myself after losing her yearly salary. So I guess the two issues are paying tuition and getting by without her salary for 3 years. I'm sure others have done it in far harder situations than ours, I'm just not sure where to begin. Any advice?

A: -Going to law school is one thing, actually working and making a decent living from it after schooling is another. -I started law school at 37. I went at night. Night programs, also called part time programs, take four year in my state, not three. I kept my regular job during the day. If you can't get by on one salary, then part time would be the way to go. If the law school you referred to has no part time program, and your wife would prefer a part time program, then you are not done investigating schools. So you don't know

yet what the comute would be. But if the comute turns out to be two hours, one option is to move, so that each of you comutes one hour. I understand that this would be inconvenient if her job is in the opposite direction from school, but it's one of your options. You're right, lots of people in my class succeeded in spite of financial hardships. Including single moms. So you two can do it. And your wife won't get very far with regrets over wasted years if it's me she's talking to. Tell her for me that time is still marching on. And four years from now she can be having regrets over still more wasted time, or she can be celebrating having passed the bar exam.