RE: HELOC. I think the poster might be coming from the perspective minimizing risk and hardship for his family. Instead of putting them into more debt maybe he could pick up some trips or earn some more money another way instead of further leveraging the home where his family sleeps. Just my opinion, of course.

-Pick up trips
-Uber while home
-Deliver Pizzas
-Cut the Cable
-TEMPORARILY give the household a budgetary haircut.

Just saying... If you have no emergency fund, car payments (300?, 500?, 1200?) every month, a few hundred in cell phones, and 200 in a cable tv bill, more debt is the last thing someone needs. Even though it's fairly predictable, a lot of things have to happen from the time you're given a class date and you're walking out of a successful probie PC.

Not that the above refers to the OP at all. For the OP, I think you have gun for Frontier. Your QOL, earnings, and flexibility would all be very very high at Frontier.