Picturing Freedom

I have an Excel spreadsheet that I use to keep track of my student loans. Well, not to keep track of them ... to see how quickly I can PUNCH THEM IN THE FACE.

I used to have several additional loans, since out-of-state tuition is pretty much highway robbery, but their ridiculous interest rates (SIX-POINT-EIGHT PERCENT???) strongly encouraged me to pay them off first. As of 2012, I was down to three.

So I have my Excel spreadsheet. It has three tabs, one for each loan. And thanks to my dad (who set it up) and Matt (who fixed it after I messed up a bunch of the formulas), this spreadsheet is interactive. So if I change the numbers I'm paying per month, it adjusts the entire chart and tells me how much sooner I can pay the whole thing off.

I'm still kind of far away from doing that, but I'm making excellent progress. This month, I laid the smack down on one of my three remaining loans, so I'm down to two!

Yeah, I have encouraging messages to myself at the bottom of each tab.

To keep me from feeling depressed that there's still a long way to go.

Matt thinks I'm too hard on myself, because I worry all the time that I'm not paying these off fast enough, and I don't give myself any credit for what I've already accomplished. So here goes.

In the six years since I took out my first student loan, I've already paid down $33,000. I've been paying them down since the second I took them out, and I'm hoping within the next three years, I can have my education 100% paid in full.

It feels really awkward to say this. It feels like bragging, and I guess I just don't think this is something that is brag-worthy. Matt and I are taking Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University right now through our church, and every time I hear someone say, "We've paid off [ridiculous quantity of debt!] in [ridiculously small number of months!]" it makes me want to cry out of frustration. It takes such an extreme amount of dedication to pay off any kind of debt, and when you have student loans, it's hard to be that dedicated and focused for years and years and years. Doing it any faster seems absolutely impossible.

So not only did I want to share what I'm working through right now, but I wanted to encourage you if you're in a similar boat. You're doing a good job. Someday we are going to be free. 

Do you have student loans? What are you going to do first after you make that last payment? And has anyone else gone through the Financial Peace program? (I like it a lot. I'll probably talk about it another time. EDIT: I wrote about it here.)

(P.S. If you'd like a "blank" copy of my interactive spreadsheet, send me an e-mail {allie at tulipandtweed dot com} and I'll send you a copy. It won't actually be blank because I'm afraid I might accidentally delete all the formulas, but I'll make the numbers generic so it'll still work without sharing all my personal information.)