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Earlier this week, Mark and I paid off my student loans. Paid Off


PAID OFF!

Now I do have to say that we were very blessed in the fact that my husband graduated with zero student loans, and while I had some-it was not near as bad as it could have been. (But then of course, it wasn't as good as it could have been either! If I had umm.....kept my GPA up and not failed Spanish 2 my second semester of my freshman year and kept my scholarship. I mean seriously, who fails Spanish?)

But still, I am super excited. We made our first student loan payment in July of 2007. We had set out early on with the goal of paying them off quickly, as opposed to taking the full 30 years like they wanted us to.

When Mark and I were dating and talking about our future, I always knew that I wanted to be able to stay at home when we have kids. And so, that meant planning financially for that future.(Which is not in the near future-but that's a post for another day.) It's crazy and dumb and backwards and old school that I would want to be a stay at home mother, and quite ironic that to do that I have to concentrate on paying off loans for a college degree that I won't be using. But it's something that I feel strongly about. And I know that if it gets down to it, and I'm in the middle of a job that I love and can't imagine giving up then we'll find a different way, and Mark won't be upset and life will be great. But as we have it planned now, I want to be able to spend that time at home with my children and raise my family and put my "career" on the backburner.

We don't drive brand new vehicles and we work around a budget every month and we maybe put off buying tons of new furniture or whatever because that doesn't work for us right now. And we still have season football tickets, and we go out to eat, and we buy fun things, and I never feel guilty about spending money when I do-we just don't let that get out of hand.

I am very blessed to have a husband who feels the same way about money that I do. Many couples say that money is one of their biggest issues. Our biggest money issue is why he's not spending more of it on me? I mean seriously, I'd take another diamond or maybe just a pretty bracelet, or a shopping spree-that'd be fun too.

Having money isn't everything, and I never want it to sound that way. But having money affords you choices, and we want to be able to make those choices for our family, our friends, our faith, where ever we are led.