The Slow Drip

Today's post has been 12 years in the making.

Actually 16.

And a half.

Because on this day- October 8, 2004- six months after I graduated from college and when we had been married for a whopping 5 months exactly, my students loans dispersed and it was officially time to start chipping away at the student debt mountain that I had borrowed to get my Bachelors of Science degree.

$100 a month.

And that was it.

$100 a month for the LAST 12 YEARS.

And at a 0.75% interest rate, there wasn't much of a rush to eliminate it.

Especially during graduate school, when there wasn't usually more than $100 a month to dedicate to it.

And since graduate school, when it was too familiar to really do much about.  There have always been lots of other ways to spend any extra money that could have gone toward paying it off early.

It became the slow drip that never really hurt, but it was always there.

Until today.

Because today I finally paid that ugly debt off!

Which is super exciting because it means that the debt snowball is officially in motion.  It's amazing that Jason earned his BS, MS, and PhD and yet we took out not nearly as much student loans as he could have.  Still more than we would have preferred, but not nearly as much as it could have been.  And while we've taking care of that slow drip for 12 years, we've only been paying on Jason's loans since six months after he graduated- a mere three years ago.

But the glorious news is now we can take that money and throw it toward his loans, one of which is about to be paid off as well.  And then that money plus my loan money will go toward his debt mountain, and (if everything goes according to plan) we'll be student-debt free in less than THREE years!

Just five years before Leah starts college.

Holy smokes.  It's a vicious cycle.

One I'd love to break.

Kids, since I'm writing this entire blog in the hopes that some day you'll learn something from the life your parents have lived, let me explain a few things here.

1. My dad has several college degrees.  I believe that most of them were paid for by the Army.

2. My mom went to college but didn't get a degree.  She's been busy doing other awesome things ever since.

3. Jason's dad didn't get a college degree.

4. Jason's mom graduated after I did, around the same time Jason did.  We were there.  It was amazing!

But college is a fairly young idea in our heritage.  It surprises me to type that out because in addition to Jason and me, every single one of my brothers, sisters, sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law (15 altogether!) have a college degree of one kind or another.  15!  That's a HUGE amount of higher education completed by some of the most amazing people I know.  And that love of learning was planted in us by our parents, whether they completed their college education or not.  We are a family that loves learning!

Our children will go to college too.  That isn't really a question in America anymore, is it?  We talk about college all the time in our house.  Just this week the kids accompanied me to a slightly run down part of town to give food to someone that did not have access to any food.  At all.  And on the way home we talked about what kinds of life choices people make that keep them from having the kind of life they should. Going to college is a huge one!

And here's another thing.  Even though I don't use my college degree professionally (at this point), the experiences and education I gained in my four years of school were worth more than any dollar amount I could ever put on it.  I grew up in college.  I learned amazing things, met wonderful people, learned how to live on my own.  I met Jason in college!  It's hard to imagine which of those things I would have accomplished had I stayed at home in Virginia, then moved with my parents to Arkansas, although they did end up in Utah after that, thankfully they never really offered me a place after graduation anyway.  I drove to BYU-Idaho- it was still Ricks College back then- the day after I graduate from high school.  I launched!  And I'm so grateful to my parents for that.  The most important things all worked out just the way they were supposed to, and college was a huge vehicle for all of it.

Yes, I have spent many a day loathing my student loans over the last 12 years.  But I still wouldn't trade the experiences gained while I was accruing them for anything.

So it's with a happy, grateful heart that I can finally announce that the slow drip has finally shut off.  Thanking it for all that it gave me, never comparing myself to those that never had to deal with student loans in the first place, and saying good riddance to it for good!