Law Students

How it Changed

By Andrea

First in a series of scattered posts about the money.

I remember once, before any of this happened, thinking to myself, "What's the amount of money it would take for me to say, this will change our life?" And I think I settled on $250K or something, something really big, because of all our loans. The school debt is no joke - between the two of us, we have over $200K in student loans, and that's including the fact that I had very little undergrad debt that mostly got paid off through Americorps vouchers when I was teaching. It would be easy to be a little depressed about the fact that we could use the Jeopardy after-tax money on just loans and still not hit the bottom of the bowl.

But there is cause for hope. We aren't paying off any of our federal low-interest loans, especially not mine, because they're forgivable by Harvard, and I'm not paying a dollar when Uncle Harvie will eventually do it for me. (Yes, this money screws my LIPP eligibility, but only for 6 months until Dan's income drops back to its real level, which is so low it's lower than my fellowship salary and doesn't even get calculated into LIPP.) The first order of business was the Sly Fox, our beloved new car. We paid it off this morning. It's ours. Feels great.

The second was Dan's private loans, and here I want to stop and give us some props. Dan had high-interest private loans from law school totalling $32,000 the day he graduated. We've been paying the minimums on his other loans and throwing every spare dollar we had at these since then - gambling profits, sudden windfalls, change from the couch, and without the winnings, took it down under $12,000 all on our own. I think that's damn impressive, and it reminds me that we would have made it without this miracle. And this morning, we paid it off. Goodbye.

The next order of business will be to open a money market account, and there to put in two very large sums of money for two different purposes. One, we have to pay 2009 federal taxes on this puppy, to the tune of $40, 45K. Ouch, but OK. I'm a good liberal and I will cheerfully pay my taxes.

Two, and this is the one that makes me emotional, I'm moving $30,000 in as our house fund. It's our downpayment on the little house or townhouse that we'll get in the D.C. suburbs in 3 or 4 years, where Becca and her sibling(s) will play with a doggie and we'll eat veggie burgers and watch movies and be together in a place to call our own. We thought it would take a long time to do it, long enough that Becca wouldn't be so little anymore. And it was worth it to have the careers we wanted and the time to come home and eat those burgers, but still, the dream seemed far off.

Now it's around the corner. And that's how the money changed everything.

Full post as published by Peanut Butter Burrito on April 15, 2008 (boomark / email).