real life with (very) real debt
Welcome to another edition of personal finance confessions — a totally irregular recap of how I’m managing my money lately.
This is my fourth confessions post. Here are the others: one | two | three.
This round features five confessions. Much like the first three posts, calling these confessions is likely a little dramatic.
Here we go.
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Repaying the student loan has been our top financial priority for the last few years.
Like many others, we started our adult lives in the red. Our $65K-ish starting debt wasn’t entirely student loans. We had a couple small credit cards, a car loan and a credit line balance from a previous vehicle, too.
But the majority of that $65K — close to $48K — came in the form of student loans.
While I can’t deny student loans made it possible to finance an education that has opened a lot of doors for us, I also won’t pretend they are not the actual bane of my existence.
I want these loans gone. And we’ve put a lot of work (and money) into making that happen.
Until recently.
Lately, we’re less focused on the student loan. In fact, for the better part of 2021, we’ve only made minimum payments. This has slowed down our progress significantly.
But it’s OK. And today, I want to talk about why.
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How does one even begin writing a life update covering a six-month span where their life completely changed?
Hello. It’s been a while — certainly longer than I intended.
When I hit publish on my last post, I did not anticipate it would take me so long to get back to this space. If you go by that date, it’s been more like five months, but most of that post was written in advance. Realistically, it’s been closer to six months since I actually sat down to write.
That’s wild to me considering I kept a pretty consistent twice-weekly schedule for almost two years.
But a lot has changed. Life today looks very different than it did at the beginning of 2021.
And while I am hopeful things will be a little less chaotic coming into the end of the year, some of the events are going to continue impacting my life and this blog.
Here’s a glimpse at where I’ve been and where I’m heading.
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Welcome to another edition of personal finance confessions — a totally irregular recap of things you might not know about how I’m managing my money lately.
This is my third confessions post — you can find the first two here and here.
This round features five confessions (although much like the first two posts, I still think calling them personal finance confessions is a bit dramatic).
Here we go.
Continue Reading