Loss of motivation and need help selecting courses

For some reason, upon editing a thread said thread got deleted, so I’ll try again once more:

I am 3.96 unweighted GPA junior who is most likely going to receive a National Merit scholarship. Already with this, I have +$40k a year at UH in the bank, so I’m having trouble seeing why I should care about getting straight A’s when I can enjoy being with my friends and sparing a few B’s in the progress. Is it okay to be a bit more laid back since I already have quite a bit of money from scholarships, with more coming my way through FAFSA and need-based scholarships as long as I don’t get a C and do real well on my AP exams?

Speaking of which, I’m selecting courses for next year and I believe that I’m going to take way too many AP classes in senior year. With 4 AP classes (Stats, Physics, Lang, APUSH, and 3 easy/PreAP classes I’ll make A’s in no matter what), I made all A’s last semester but am looking at possibly only 1 A this semester (Stats = easy for me) in my AP classes or maybe two or three if I really up my game, which is possible but difficult. I don’t want to kill myself next semester, so with how I’m doing my junior year, what AP classes should I be taking/avoiding? Currently, my perhaps overzealous plan, is to take APES, Lit, Gov/Politcs (sem courses at my school), AB Calc, Psych, and Human Geo (the latter two I’m a bit interested in but could also take in college). Should I modify this plan if it’s already looking likely that I’m not gonna make all A’s junior year? Really, my goal is to just get AP credit and to be able to go to college with few debts.

If you know for sure you want to go to UH and are positive you can get in, I would look at what AP credit they take, what would count as general ed and towards potential degrees, and go from there. And what’s your PSAT score? If its even close to the border for your state I would try until you find out for sure so you have more merit options if it doesn’t work out. Also make sure your GPA stays fine for NMF.

Don’t let your grades drop too much, or you could get rescinded. Colleges ask for your final transcript and will wonder what happened if your grades drop too much