Introduction

Hello! If you find yourself reading this blog, you're probably in debt, though probably not as much as I am. After years spent neglecting this debt, I'm on a mission to beat it. I'd be surprised to find any readers, but the purpose of this blog is to motivate me- to help with my willpower to do what needs to be done to rid myself and my family of the massive burden of student loan debt.

I'm Jill, and I am a mother, wife, and professional, and am also starting a new business. My career, along with my husband's, is the result of extensive schooling, and that graduate education for two was definitely not cheap. I also have leftover student loans from my undergrad. Our family total in student loan debt?

$234,434.00.

Yeah, you read that right. I didn't misplace a comma.

This blog will be my accounting of the process I am going through to be student loan debt free. It's a massive, and overwhelming, undertaking. Hopefully, I am up to the challenge!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

End of January 2018 Report

Well, this is embarrassing. For my first monthly update, I have by far the worse savings performance since I began this last August. Sigh. It was a tough month both for income and spending. So, instead of meeting my goal of saving 35-40% of income, we actually spent 8% more than we brought in. Ugh! (I don’t factor in retirement savings, if I factor that in then we did save 9% of our income this month). Here’s what went wrong: Income: We are not salaried employees. We get paid for the work we do, and not usually immediately; it may be a week to months for us to be paid for the services. This was a slow income month for a couple reasons. For one, we took time off around Christmas, and since we get no paid time off, this was reflected in paychecks this month. Second, January is a notoriously slow time for reimbursements in our field- hopefully as this catches up, we’ll see some good paychecks in the near future. Spending: We had a few budget busters in here. For one, our prop
Read more

So Much To Do- Goals

As I stated in my first post, my major goal is to pay off our over $230K in student loan debt. However, the reality is that this is the major goal in a sea of other objectives. Now that the car loan which had been bugging me is paid off, I’d love nothing more than to throw every single possible cent at the student loan monster. Because I really, REALLY hate it. But more practical considerations have gotten in my way. If you know anything about the world of personal finance, you know Dave Ramsey, and he advocates for paying off all non-mortgage debt before saving a sizeable (3-6 month) emergency fund or saving for retirement. After much consideration, I decided that this plan wouldn’t work for us, for a few reasons. For one, we’re too old to put off saving for retirement, and we’d miss out on the tax advantages. Two, both of us work in the same organization, and if something were to ever go wrong there, we could both be out of a job, making a good-sized emergency fund (6 months) so
Read more

Don't Whine, Jill- Why I Don't Complain About My Debt (usually)

Having a massive amount of debt can be a real downer. It’s easy to start thinking of everything you could be doing if that debt wasn’t hanging over your head. Mostly, I think about how, if I didn’t have this debt, I would have the freedom to work less, and spend more time with my family. There is not a thing in this world that I value more than that. Still, I rarely get too upset about my debt, for a few reasons. Although our student loan debt is enormous (>$230K), the graduate education we received from these loans has allowed us to make a relatively high income. I know there are plenty of people who may not have had such a large debt load, but also made less of an income, and they’ve successfully tackled their debt. It’s certainly overwhelming to think about conquering such a high number, but with hard work, I know that it is doable. Also, although by some definitions we might be considered poor (having a negative net worth and all), that is in no way our reality. We
Read more