Guess What?!

Last weekend, my husband and I made our last student loan payment.  We have been working on paying off our five-figure debt for almost two years, and we are finally debt-free!

Both of us went to private colleges for university (with varying amounts of parental help, financial aid, and scholarships), so we had some hefty student loan debt (#millennialproblems).  Neither of us worked particularly hard at paying it off in the early years after we graduated; it just seemed like the payoff date was so far away we would never get there.

After we got married, we decided to get more serious with our finances.  My husband had been budgeting for about a year, so it seemed like a good time for me to get on board.  We decided that our first big financial goal was to pay off our debt; we made a plan and stuck to it.

Every month for two years, all of our extra money went into paying off our debt.  It wasn’t fun (there are so many better ways I could spend that money), and it didn’t really get easier.  It was hard to see so much money go away towards our debt.  But the feeling we got when we paid something off was amazing.  We lived for those small victories; they kept us going.

And now, it’s done! It’s so nice to have that weight off of our shoulders.  In our giddiness, we will sometimes ask each other, “Guest what?!” and the other person says, “We’re debt free!”  It makes us smile every time.