I really stink at this blog thing. Oh well. Maybe if I lead a more interesting life I could blog more about interesting things…but I’m just not interesting. But I did realize that I haven’t made a post about the status of our loans, which is a question we get at least once a week.
We’re chuggin’ along. That’s really all I can say. We are roughly a year and a half away from being 100% debt free. It’s strange for me to say because I’ve been so used to saying 3 years, 2 ½ years, etc. So to think we’re only 1 ½ years out is crazy! There have been some months when we couldn’t make those big extra payments so that’s put us a month or 2 behind, but that’s okay.
I still have moments when I feel like this will always be our life. We’ll never move out, never have a place of our own, but I know those are lies that Satan tries to convince me of to keep me down. I think when we hit the halfway point I felt like I was seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but then we didn’t seem to go any further. But now we’re way past halfway and that light isn’t my imagination. It’s definitely getting bigger.
Looking forward into the future I wonder how this will affect our spending. I’m sure we’re still going to be cheapskates. We were before we got married. Everyone gives Scotty a hard time about being cheap but I personally think I’m cheaper than him. My mother tells me I squeak when I walk. Ha!
But going back to the loan situation, I’ll be real honest. Sallie Mae (the company that owns us) has been very frustrating. Their customer service is awful. I’ve never actually talked to a real human. Emails are never responded to, and there are constant changes to the website…kind of like facebook. The most recent change, though, has been a good one. From the beginning we’ve paid a large sum of money every month. We had no say in which loan that money was going to. Sallie Mae just divided it equally between all of them. So a debt snowball is virtually impossible to do. So if you have a loan for a measly $700, that you could get rid of quickly, you can’t until all other loans are paid off too. Does that make sense? BUT the recent change has fixed that. When you make a larger payment you now get to choose what loan you want it to go to!!! This is big people. Real Big. We actually have a measly loan that started at $700 so we’re going to get rid of that just because we can, but then we’re going to get rid of the ones with the highest interest rates. This means that we’ll get our loans paid off a smidge quicker, maybe a month or 2 quicker. That’s a BIG DEAL!!
When we started our journey I was very worried about what others were going to think. Why? I don’t know, that’s just who I am. I didn’t want to be judged because we were living with parents. But for the most part, we’ve gotten a lot of encouragement. That encouragement means so much to us. This process would be a lot harder without it. There are, of course, the haters. We’ve been told we’re just moochers, not really paying anything off, just trying to live for free. 1)I’m a little shocked that some people really think that. 2)If you’re one of those people….I don’t need you. And that’s that.
We’ve been blessed to have the friends we have. You all mean a lot to us! Thank you!!
