Could've... Should've... Would've

(circa 2004, at our first apartment with an entertainment budget that allowed us to go on free bike rides for dates)

Of all of the financial choices we have made together in our married years, we've felt good about most of them.

Deciding to quit my job and become a stay at home mom after Leah was born?  Excellent choice.

Jason forgoing the lucrative opportunity to become a high school science teacher in favor of continuing higher education?

The decision to not buy a house in Indiana?  Good choice- we weren't there for very long and we did not have any extra income to put toward home ownership.

The decision to buy a house as soon as we moved to Iowa?  Good choice since our mortgage on our 4 bedroom/3 bath house is the same amount as the rent on our two bedroom/2 bathroom apartment was.

But before all of that was the decision to take out student loans... and that one is a mixed bowl full of emotions that we've been combating for 14 years now.  Did we really need all of that money?  What exactly did we do with all of it?

But one way or another, that chapter of our family history is closed.  As of today, we are officially student loan - and all other debts, too- FREE!!!  Free at last!  Free at last!

During our graduate school years we let our loans sit, deferred and haunting our future.  We knew we had years and years of income ahead of us to tackle them.  And once we graduated, tackle them we did.  For the last five years, every bonus, tax refund or windfall of money has been in some part, used to pay down our student loans.

Extra money at the end of the month?  Student loans.

Paid less for a bill than we budgeted? Student loans.

Every few months I skimmed the interest off of our savings account and applied it to student loans.

After paying off my loan in 2016 we set the goal to be completely debt free (except our mortgage) by 2020.  It has a nice ring to it.  Debt freeeeee by Twenty-Twentyyyyyyy.

Still, tackling the $64,878 worth of debt that we accrued in our early twenties to earn three of our four degrees seemed like quite the mountain to climb.

But as the months and years went by 2020 started to seem not soon enough.  So we pushed a whole lot harder and today we finally- finally!- reached our goal.

And yes, we had four babies and started saving for their futures and bought a house and took a trip to Puerto Rico and a vacation to Disney World and a Disney cruise and paid off our minivan before we reached this goal.  Because living life doesn't always equate to simply paying down student debt.  We've been living along the way.

Sure, we could've, should've, would've done it all differently.  But we didn't.  We did it this way.

And now it's done! Goodbye past, hello future!

We absolutely would not be where we are in life today if we hadn't taken out those loans.  There's no questions about that.  And I'll always wonder what we could have done differently to set our financial lives down a straighter path.  But the lessons we learned and the growing we had to do along the way, leaning on each other and figuring everything out on our own?  I wouldn't trade that for all the debt in the world.

And yes, Jason and I celebrated with a dinner date- and a buy-one-get-one-free coupon that brought our celebratory total to $8.

Those hard earned old student life habits aren't going anywhere!