Paying Off Meg's Loan

When Trump took over office in January, he instantly started to make changes policies in the federal government.  Some of those were extremely worrisome as he cut thousands of National Park rangers' jobs and others were absurd as he signed a proclamation to stop the plastic straw initiative. The talk for supporting his policies and on the flip side, denouncing them, were all over social media.  I tried not to follow the discussion as I knew it would only make me anxious.  Just knowing that Elon Musk was a large part of his plan for a government overhaul scared me.  I didn't need to listen to much more.  

The one topic that kept coming up, however, was Trump's plan to eliminate the Federal Department of Education.  Unlike most of the news media, I realized that this wouldn't mean that all public schools would close, but I did understand that the hope of the college loan forgiveness program that Biden tried to launch four years had been completely dashed at this year's inauguration.  That reality, coupled with the craziness of the new policies, encouraged me to begin to look at paying off Meg's loans ourselves.  The current plan of putting a $100 a month on the debt would mean that it would take ten years to completely pay them off.  The interest rates weren't high, but we would spend an extra $3000 on the life of the loan.  That seemed like a lot to me as the original loans were only $10,000 to start.

After going through all of our long-term finances with Doug in January, I was able to show him that we now had the funds to pay off Meg's loan in full.  It would also eliminate the concern that Meg would be left to pay off the loan herself if something happened to both Doug and I as it was technically her college debt.  After looking at everything, we agreed that there was money available to bring the debt down to zero by the first of March.  The good news was that we would also be able to add money to both of our retirement accounts, put a little bit extra on our mortgage and still have enough left in the budget to pay for new kitchen countertops without touching our savings.  Thus, at the beginning of this month, I paid off Meg's smallest loan since it had the highest interest rate.  All went well with that payment, so last week I paid off the second one. 

Making that payment was an awesome feeling as we were finally done with Meg's college expenses.  I know that all of our children have appreciated our commitment to pay for their education.  It is the best way for us to help them pave their way toward a stable financial future.  Most of all, I am extremely proud of Doug and I for doing this without any help from anyone else.  We had been given some empty promises of assistance when Brett was a freshman.  I am incredibly glad that we didn't sit around and wait on that as the help never came.  I also couldn't be prouder of our family for making sacrifices and working hard to make everyone's future secure.