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I currently have approximately $9,000 in two old 401k's through Fidelity and John Hancock from previous jobs. My current job has a 401a plan (an alternative to social security; we and our employer pay into the account instead of paying social security taxes) where I can take out a loan against the account and pay it back with a good interest rate. The interest paid goes back into the account.

I currently have about $12,000 in credit card debt that I want to get rid of. The 401a account has about $20,000 in it. I am allowed to withdraw a loan of about $9,000 to pay towards that debt. The payments for this loan come directly out of my paycheck and can have a payoff period of about 36-60 months.

I have a few options and I'm trying to figure out which one is best. Which one do you think is the best option?

1) Cash out my old 401k's and put them towards my credit card debt, then take a smaller loan out of my 401a to pay off the rest. My question with this would be what kind of immediate taxes would I need to pay and what taxes would I pay next year?

2) Roll the 401k's into the 401a and take a large loan against it to pay off the debt.

3) Do nothing and pay off the debt normally (which will take a long time in our financial situation).

Additional info: I'm 27 years old, can retire with a decent pension at 53, and will be contributing to a deferred comp plan after deciding on one of the options. Pre-tax income is around $115,000 filing jointly with my wife.

I've been living in a new home since the beginning of this year. Our first PUD bill was for a partial billing cycle of about five weeks (normal bills are about two months) and came to about $98.

We just received our first bill for a full cycle; $992. We went from using approximately 400 kwh in our first cycle to being billed for 7675 kwh this cycle. We also apparently went from 350 CF of water to 6700 CF this billing cycle.

We've had everything pretty much exactly the same since moving into the house. We didn't change anything that should be causing such an insane amount of water or electricity usage.

There are no new fees, deposits, etc. on this bill. We are only being charged for electricity and water. I checked our water meter to see if the dial was still going even with all the water inside the house shut off; the need wasn't moving, so it's unlikely we have any leaks. The house had a great inspection report prior to us buying it with no noted electrical or water issues.

Additionally when I called the PUD to ask why the bill was so high, they checked their records and found a similar incident happened about two years ago, but don't have much more info on it.

While all initially had a good laugh about starting a grow op, this is no longer funny. We're looking at a $1000 bill we cannot pay. Does anyone know what we can do or what we should do to figure this out? I checked to see if someone is siphoning electricity or water and couldn't find anything.

I had recently heard somewhere that Hispanic is actually a derogatory term, or at least was when it was first used. I view being "politically correct" as actually being respectful of people, so I wish to use the appropriate term.

For quite some time now I've wanted to get my master's degree, but I'm still not really sure what I should get it in. Down the road I would like to advance to the command level at my department. My B.A. is in Law and Justice (fancy wording for criminal justice). I'm aware of a Criminology program I could go into, but in terms of advancement within my department, I don't know how desirable that would be. Anyone have some suggestions for programs or specific majors? I'm hoping for something that could help me to advance but also give me knowledge of some different and innovative ways to deal with crime in a city or county setting. Any insight or suggestions are appreciated.

Also, if you know of any good places to find scholarships for law enforcement specific majors, let me know. I'm lacking the $10k-$20k needed to get this degree.

I bought Skyrim (DVD, not download) for my PC several months ago and played the game through Steam. The PC was put in storage, along with the game, and I now have a laptop that can run the game. I was told by someone that I can download Skyrim to my laptop through Steam because I already bought the game and was using the Steam launcher to play it. I cannot find a way to do this through Steam anywhere. Is there a way to get Skyrim installed without diving through two storage units to try and find the DVD for it, or getting access to that computer where it is installed?

Allow me to explain. Some friends and I are in the middle of creating a table top RPG game with an end goal of publishing the game. Copyright law is definitely not something we know anything about, and I've heard before that AEG (Alderac Entertainment Group) owns the rights to the D10 system. For those of you unfamiliar with the system (probably anyone who reads this) it is the dice system that some table top RPG's use for all of their game mechanics. It determines whether or not you successfully complete an action.

The D20 system is actually the most common and is used widely by games like Dungeons and Dragons. My fear here is that someone owns the rights to the D10 system and we're creating a game that will ultimately not go published without a substantial amount of money going to AEG since we are using their system.

If anyone knows 1) how to find out if there is a copyright on the system or 2) if you can even copyright something like this, please let me know. Feel free to ask any questions for clarification.

I'm trying to setup the T-Mobile router on a different computer because my last one died. Normally the install CD and everything associated with it works just fine. Now however when it gets to the point where it tries to detect my current network settings (Comcast cable modem, nothing fancy or different from how they first install it) it says it can't detect my settings and says to either make sure your computer has a wired connection to the router (the router isn't supposed to be connected yet), check your modem connection (I'm on the internet obviously) or check the status of your ISP. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? I've never had this problem before.