A financial milestone
Tomorrow marks a momentous day in my personal financial life – the day my college loans will be paid off. I believe in the philosophy that a person can live a debt-free lifestyle if they make it a priority, and since we have no credit card debt, the next highest interest rate loan we were carrying was my school loan. 2007 was not a particularly good year for the stock portfolio, so I decided that rather than letting a good portion of my cash sitting in a stock portfolio losing money, I would sell off one of my positions and put that money towards paying down debt instead.
I was lucky enough that I was able to save a lot of money at the start of my career, which I used to pay off one of my loans right away. My other loan has just been getting diminshed payment by payment for the last eight years, until now when the amount was down to an amount where the stock sale and a bit of savings could bring the payments to an end. I feel pretty fortunate that I was able to pay off all my college loans within a decade of graduating.
The next step in our financial goals will be to build our savings back up to have three full months of expenses, and then pay off Amanda’s school loan. That will leave us with a 0% APR loan for furniture we bought this year, two car loans, one of which will be payed off on schedule in 2008, and our mortgage, which has another 29 and 3/4 years to go.
Congratulations, Bud!
See you tonight at the party.
Congrats on paying off the college loans. It occurred to me that right around the same that I had paid off my college loans – that I had forgotten everything I learned in college (and replaced it with newer “stuff”). I also forgot what I learned in high school about grammer, punctuation and how to craft a proper sentence (see 2nd sentence, above).
This effect reminds me of having an appliance crap-out one day after the warranty expires. Hopefully, your “warranty” won’t expire.
Happy Holidays!