I think hubby and I are the average 30-somethings. But we want to be above average. We want to be weird.
For some people normal is finishing high school and then attending a city, state, or private university for four or more years with maximum loans and minimal scholarships.
For a subset of those people, normal is also going on to graduate school without really knowing if it is worth the expenditure and deciding to foot most or all of the bill (rather than having an employer pay for it or save up for it ahead of time).
And for most of the people in this set, and subset, normal is paying those payments nearly clear into retirement.
I don't want to be normal anymore. I am tired of our debt practically cancelling out our savings whenever I calculate our net worth. I'm tired of not being able to go on a "real" vacation because we have to be responsible. I'm tired of paying interest! I'm tired of not being able to stack paper in our retirement and emergency funds. We work hard, so we should be able to save hard. But because of the loans we've taken, we just can't.
I'm fully aware that there are people who make do with a whole lot less and don't have the privelege of the educations we take almost for granted.. However, I'm not happy. I feel that if we have fancy educations, and solid jobs, we should have healthy finances as well. I believe we've been truly blessed and we need to do awesome things with those blessings. Things so awesome that haters line up around the block.
1. paid off our credit card debts.
2. saved for an emergency. Yes folks. We somehow manage to scrape together a modest-living eight-month emergency fund. That means we'd have to cut our lifestyle to the bone, but we wouldn't have to go without food, transportation and shelter for eight months.
3. Now we're going to pay off our student loans. By my calculations it will take a little less time than the emergency fund, and a little more time than the credit card debts. But I know we can do it.
How weird are you?
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