One Step Closer!
As I make posts about personal finance tips, I also want to share how we’re doing on our journey to being debt free. So… This week we paid off our final private loan! This has been such a huge goal for us and something that we are thrilled to have done!
This was a private loan for my freshman and sophomore years of college. I borrowed $20,877 (no clue why I borrowed such an odd number) and ended up paying $24,299.53 total with $3,422.53 being interest. I started paying about $200 a month from January through April 2015, and then really got going on it when I got a job in May 2015! Like I said in my last post, when Jacob and I got married we finished his private loan quickly, and then had the goal to finish my private loan. While still doing monthly minimum payments to our government loans, we then put all our extra money to my private loan! We are so excited to have this goal reached and have another item to check off our list. I’m sure my parents are also happy it’s done since they were co-signers. 🙂
What’s Next
After I made my final payment, I called my loan provider to ask a question. The representative I got was very helpful and he said “you made your final payment on your loan! Congratulations! That is amazing. What are you going to do next?” First off, what an awesome reaction! Thanks for the encouragement, Wells Fargo representative! And then I told him that I get to look forward to paying off the next loan…
Now that we’re done with our private loan, we get to put extra to our government loans. We will take the amount we have put to my private loan and put it to our government loans to pay them off faster, starting with the loans with the highest interest rates! Continuing at the rate we are going, it’s our goal to be completely debt free in summer 2018.
Once we have our loans completely paid off, we plan to go on a vacation. I’m trying to persuade Jacob to go on a trip to Disney World and a cruise! Having something like that to look forward to pushes us to continue to keep paying our loans.
I wanted to share this update to hold us accountable in our journey, and share our excitement! When working to be debt free and get a hold on your finances, its important to celebrate the milestones.
So here’s to being one step closer to financial freedom! Also, thanks to everyone for all the encouragement we have received though starting this blog. We feel so blessed to have support as we pay off our debts.
Keep on keeping on.
Marissa