3 years ago, my husband Daniel picked me up from work and he had clearly gone to Half Price Books right before. I asked him what all these books were and his words were, "I think I know what I want to do for the rest of my life." I was blown away. My husband has a hard time deciding on clothes, so this came as a shock to me. Many of you know what he wanted to do was become a pilot. I was so excited and we soon turned our lives upside down to accomplish this. It was so exciting! We sold our house, a car, a motorcycle and bunch of other crap and did a whole bunch of other stuff to prepare for this new adventure. Including....getting a student loan from Satan. Satan has a way of making you feel like you are the worst human being on the planet. I had been busting my ass to pay off debt and get our credit scores up high and silly ol' me thought that would matter to Satan. Satan didn't give a shit about my 780 credit score or my giant chunk of money in savings from selling our house. No...to Satan I was a dirt poor moron who had never paid a bill in my life and needed to be treated like a homeless red-headed orphan.
But...Daniel had a dream and now my dream was to make his dream happen...even if it meant selling my soul to...well, you know.
I actually spent nights crying in the closet over the way Satan treated me. I refused to ask anyone to co-sign on this loan (our families had helped us in so many ways already) so it was up to me and my pure determination to get this friggin loan. Well after months we finally got the damn loan. Hooray.
Now that I had the loan...I had to actually deal with Satan regularly. I won't go into the details, but at one point I was on the phone with customer service literally jumping up and down screaming to talk to a supervisor. It was a high point in my life, for sure.
Fast forward to last fall. Daniel got a new job (not in the airline industry since it's the wrong time to try) and he started making a little bit more money. I was determined to get Satan off my back as soon as I can. I started to hash out the finances and feverishly working on a spreadsheet to make it make sense. Then....one December day I had it. The plan to get Satan out of my life as soon as humanly possible.
The plan: All of Heather's paycheck gets put aside to pay Satan off in 2 years or less. Plus 1/3 of any extra money (tax return, overtime, drug sales, etc). Daniel has always trusted me to take care of the finances (because I am a mad scientist with money) but when he heard the plan and how much money it would save us in interest (I could show him on my handy spreadsheet), he actually had an expression on his face I had never seen before. Shock. My husband...the stone faced man...shocked. WIN.
So, since January I have put $13,679 toward paying Satan off. I made a lump payment of $10K today and I laughed maniacally. Satan has no hold over me!
That amount actually puts me minimum of 2 months ahead of schedule. I still have about $30K left to pay but it's dropping fast.
I will tell you now...paying off debt is addictive. Once you get started and you see those balances fall you want to dance around and laugh in the face of the gods of credit, who just so happen to be working for Satan.
A great blog I've been reading lately: http://manvsdebt.com/
A very informative infograph he posted that fueled my fire against Satan: http://manvsdebt.com/why-student-loans-suck/
Check it out follow him if you are serious about getting out of debt. Hell, if you are serious about it, talk to me. I am stupidly passionate about it and would love to help SERIOUS debt slayers out. It's a commitment that is well worth the effort. Trust me.
