Paid In FULL

Lance and I were really blessed when it came to student loans.  Neither of us were in debt for our undergraduate schooling, and Lance got a decent fellowship and then a job for graduate school so that we only needed loans for his first year at Purdue.  We lived like dirt poor graduate students (because that's what we were) and so even the loans we had were minimal.  (Especially compared to some of our friends'!)

Just before Lance graduated we had all of our loans consolidated under Sallie Mae.  We got a lower interest rate this way and it seemed like it would make repayment easier.  Wrong.  Well, not on the interest rate.  No, on the repayment part.  Let's just say Sallie Mae made things difficult.  No, that's putting it lightly. 

Sallie Mae made paying off our loan a living **!(#@*!!  (I don't know what that last word is; just fill it in with your favorite expletive.)

They made it soooooo hard to even start payments.  Then they made it even harder to pay off anything more than the bare minimum each month.  They really weren't going to make that much interest off of us, but they were bound and determined to get each and every red cent of it!

Sallie Mae was always changing security procedures and generally making it a matter of national security just to check our account online.  And trying to get a REAL person who was actually residing in this COUNTRY?  Forget about it.

And no way were they going to talk to ME about the loans.  They were all in Lance's name, so he was the only person they could deign to talk to.  Nevermind the fact that I handle all of the finances in our family and knew all of the security answers (including his social security number) better than he did.  I became pretty adept at pretending to be Lance on the phone. 

Jerks.

Anywho, Lance received a decent Christmas bonus from work this year.  After paying our tithing, setting aside another 10% of it in our savings account, and then trying to get over just exactly how much ol' Uncle Sam decided he needed from it, we started to think about what fun things we could do with the money.  We tossed around a few ideas ("A European dream trip!" "A carputer*!") (Guess whose idea was whose...) but eventually we both realized that with the bonus and some of our savings we could pay off this debt.

I don't know why, but the thought was a little scary at first, mainly because even though we were paying off debt it still felt like we were spending all of that money.  But that feeling only lasted a moment - soon I felt quite exhilarated about the whole matter.

It's taken a good week of pretenting to be Lance on the phone, answering a bajillion security questions, depositing money and transferring funds, but just 10 minutes ago I clicked the 'send funds' button on Sallie Mae's site.

It felt awesome. 

Not only are we following the counsel of the prophets, but we're also doing something I've wanted to do for quite a while: dump Sallie Mae.

Excuse my French, but there are still three little words I want to say to ol' Sallie:  Paid. In. Full. 

Oh, and Bite. Me.

Awesome.

*For those who might now know (as in, anyone outside of my immediate family) Lance's dream is to one day build a computer just for the car.  Hence the name carputer.  His only obstacles?  Money, time, and me.