#53: Pay Off Trevor's Graduate Program Student Loans

Another one bites the dust! 

We paid off Trevor's Masters' Program student loans this week.  I LOVE that we paid these off even before he graduates this May!  I hated taking out more student loans while we were trying to pay off our debt, but it made sense to do it so we could pay off higher interest rate loans in the meantime.   So it feels good to get them out of the way before he graduates. 

We've decided that we are going to take a little different direction from here on out.  We have a good chunk of student loans still, but they are at such a low interest rate (2.75%) that I would rather start focusing on saving.  With the way the economy has been going, it's been making me a little nervous to not have much money in savings.  Dave Ramsey recommends just having a $1,000 "baby" emergency fund while you attacking your loans.  I was never confident enough to keep that little of amount in savings, but we didn't keep too much more than that.  So I think I'll feel a lot better if we start working on building up a fully-funded emergency fund with at least 3-6 months of expenses.  We also have the goal of saving up enough money to pay cash for a a new car/truck for Trevor when his current truck finally breaks down (#57: Save up to buy Trevor's next car with cash.)  That could be any day now since it is on it's last leg.  We also plan to actually furnish our house with some new furniture (#55: Save up to buy new furniture with cash).  I think it's about time!  We've been in the house for about 2 years now. 

I'm excited to start seeing our savings grow.  They'll grow so much faster without all those old loan payments!

#52. Pay Back Dad Money I Still Owe Him from College

Our debt-load is once again a little lighter!  (I didn't have a picture to go with this post, so I had to put something on here.  I never like reading blogs without pictures, so I just can't post without SOME sort of picture.) 

When we went up to Nebraska for the New Year, we surprised Dad with a repayment of our 0.00% APR student loan.  I think Dad went ahead and paid over-and-above the amount each of us girls got for college during the semester I went to Greece.   I was determined to pay Dad back when we began our Dave Ramsey plan, but Dad told us to enjoy the 0% interest and get our other loans paid off first.  We told Dad we were going to pay him back after off our car was paid off in February 2009, but as you can see we did this ahead of schedule in October 2008! We knocked out one more student loan in November and then made it our goal to pay back Dad's loan in December. 

We were really excited at the end of the year to look back on our progress in 2008.  I hesitate to share the actual numbers since it's kind of personal, but I always am motivated by reading other people's accomplishments when paying off debts.  Maybe this will motivate you that it can be done!  Just an FYI - none of this was credit card debt - just student loans, a car loan, and a 0% mattress loan.  I always feel like I have to preface that we didn't do anything irresponsible...we just went to a private college!  We began the Dave Ramsey plan in January of 2007.  You can tell we got a little bit more serious in 2008!  Here are the stats of our debt payoff (not including mortgage).  Yes, I did pull these amounts from an Excel spreadsheet - I am a true accountant!:

Amount of Debt Paid Off in 2008:	$22,297.44
Amount of Debt Paid Off in 2007:	$15,833.27
Total Loans Paid Off Since We Started	$38,130.71

I can't believe we paid off that much money in two years!  It feels like you are getting nowhere at first, but once you get the debt snowball going, it really does pick up speed! 

I lied.  I am going to post some pictures.  I'll leave you with a few pictures of Trevor and I during our semester in Greece. 

(Side note- These pictures aren't from my camera.  I did not even have a digital camera in Greece in 2003.  Actually, only a couple people had digital cameras at that time.  That makes me feel so old for some reason.  I can just hear my kids saying some day, "You didn't EVEN have a digital camera!  Wow, you're really OLD!  How did you take pictures?  What is this stuff you call 'film'?")

In front of the Parthenon

Right after our Engagement...

On this Island....

During this Sunset! 

I think it was so TOTALLY worth having some loans for this experience....

Thanks Dad!

#51: Pay Off the Car!

 

Here I am hugging our PAID OFF CAR!!  It feels so good to not have any car payments again!  We've been diligently following the Dave Ramsey plan for the past few years and we paid off a good chunk of our student loans before we put all our focus on paying off the car.

Let me tell you....it sure drives a lot smoother without dragging around a loan.  The day we paid it off, I honestly heard the song "Free Ride" on my way home from work - how appropriate!  Ok, I know it's not "free," but with no car payments and the price of gas now, it almost feels free!