Last week I met a major personal milestone! After 10 years, I managed to finally pay off all of my student loan debt. I had paid off all my individual loans with my school years ago, but I still held onto all of my Direct Loans since the interest rates were so low.

The last major chunk was $17,125.00, slowly paid over 10 years. I actually paid way more than my payment every month, but it somehow still got drug out over a long period of time. It actually makes me kind of sad to realize this loan was only $17,125.00 and it took me so long. What was I thinking?

Well in reality, I focused on all of my other debt over the years that carried a higher interest rate. I never consolidated my loans because every year right before the interest rates were about to reset (June/July), the rates typically dropped. So I kept putting off doing it. I also never had automatic payments set up to receive a 0.25% rate reduction. Personally, I was always discouraged by the fact that after I already had been making payments for years, I still would have had to make like several years of payments to receive the discount.

So I probably could have knocked this loan out a lot sooner, but instead I decided to drive new vehicles and purchase my first home. Of course the cars might not have been the best decision, but we are also quickly learning that the purchase of our first home (I did it well before I ever met my wife) has been a money trap.

Of course I purchased the home when the markets were all booming, and no one ever anticipated that buying a home would lose so much depreciation. I will talk more about the finances of buying and selling our first home in a future post, hopefully after we sell it.

In the meantime, I am going to go and celebrate my victory in being able to finally say that personally (i.e. not including any debt that is technically in my wife’s name (her vehicle and student loans), or our home(s)), I am DEBT FREE!! No car payments, no student loan payments, and no credit card debt. I consider this a huge personal victory, especially in light of doing it all right before we are purchasing our dream home.

After we get into the new home, and hopefully sell our current home, I will have to resit down with my wife and determine what is the next major debt we want to knock out.