Comments on: Year One Was Bad, Year Two Is Agony

By: Sandy

Sandy — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 22:13:02 +0000

@deepomega I’m late to the party but I needed to say I soooo agree with you and @sally up above. The author is being proactive about her debt! Give her a slap on the back! Yeah, the day she wrote this it totally sucked and she felt down about it, but if I’m reading the post right, in about a year and seven months she will be completely debt free. No more debt. Yay! Good for you! Keep at it! Then you’ll have the rest of your life to be debt free. I applaud people who can pay debt down while still going out to eat and buying little luxuries, but that didn’t work for me: My husband and I watched our debt roll in and out like the tide, spending some and paying some, until we went cold turkey on discretionary spending like the author here. And then it was gone. Now we do all the stuff we love (we took the family to Europe this winter for 2 weeks) and we can afford it all, which wouldn’t have happened if we were still paying interest to half the world. And here’s where I’ll really get in trouble: Overall, I think Americans (myself included) are not great at saying, “This is going to suck, but I’m going to sacrifice spending for a while to gain a greater good.” (We’re MUCH better at saying “Treat yourself!” or “You deserve it!” or “This is too hard.”) If she’s choosing to do sacrifice FOR A WHILE, she should find herself some equally frugal friends, which will make everything better, and carry on. Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

By: MalPal

MalPal — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 18:13:13 +0000

My personal perception is that there is probably a better way to do whatever it is they are doing. The main criticism I have is that what they are doing now isn’t teaching them how to live in a balanced way. Even if they get out of debt completely living these lifestyles of punishment, they still haven’t learned anything about balancing their budget for practical and personal needs. I would hate to see them caught in a cycle of indulgence and repentance.

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 15:13:55 +0000

@WhatWorks How do you figure deprivation contributed to the debt?

By: notpollyanna

notpollyanna — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 14:58:35 +0000

I paid my student loans in an extreme fashion for the last four years. Sometimes it makes sense to try to pay them down fast, to be that kind of miserable. My example: I didn’t make enough money to cover rent of any sort, so I lived with my parents. Even though I couldn’t afford rent, living with my parents meant that I did have enough leftover at the end of every month to send extra to my student loans. My budget was “spend as little as possible”. I did this with the goal of reducing my monthly payments to the point where I could afford a rent payment. It was miserable. Living with my parents was bad for a lot of reasons. Three and half years in, I had paid down ~$45k (of $106k) and reduced my payments from $870 to $460. It was a huge accomplishment, but it still didn’t leave me enough to pay rent (and utilities, and food, etc.). It was soul crushing to make SO MUCH progress for zero payoff. Finally I found a new job making a lot more money (60% raise!) and could afford rent. Sigh of relief.

Spending less on my student loans would not have made me much less miserable because I would still have been financially trapped in my parents house. Sometimes that is how it works.

By: notpollyanna

notpollyanna — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 14:49:27 +0000

@SterlingCooper05 Your income is going to have a lot to do with it. Your achievement is wonderful, but not possible for everyone, even if they cut to the bone. You probably still had more spending money than this woman. I paid off $53k in 4 years, but that was on a $25k salary while spending a fourth of my income on health care. I lived with my parents, so I didn’t pay rent, but I spent every leftover dime on my student loans to pay them ahead. It was miserable.

By: TARDIStime

TARDIStime — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 05:49:58 +0000

@Crabtree I second this entire comment!

By: chillizabeth

chillizabeth — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 00:48:53 +0000

@amyfrances – I was freaking out about student debt recently (always?) and my boyfriend poetically described it as “it’s like paying rent on your brain.” It seems like such a nicer way to think about student debt than as just DEBT. Escapist? Maybe.

By: WhatWorks

WhatWorks — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 00:14:05 +0000

Sounds like maybe it’s a slippery slope for the author and she’s going to extremes to avoid “backsliding”. The way money works, you pay to be poor, you get paid to have money, so it’s worth it to do everything you can to tip over into the black unless you’re very financially savvy and can leverage debt to create more money (ie. making money off of other people’s money that you borrow).

So, if that’s the case then that kind of extremism will pay off and this short-term pain now will be followed by a well-earned and deserved sense of accomplishment. Keep the end goal in sight!!

Some people need to go to extremes. On the other hand, if this is a symptom of a larger problem that needs to be addressed, this could turn in to the kind of deprivation that will follow long after the debt is paid off (and potentially could have contributed to the debt in the first place?) If that’s the case, then this extreme effort is not going to solve the problem, and suffering may be more of a general “way of life” with or without money. Money by itself is not good if you’re a miserable person!

I get the feeling though that they are just going all out to make sure they’re accomplishing their goals, and that if they can make it thru to the other side, it will have been worth it for them.

By: eemusings@twitter

eemusings@twitter — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 00:02:52 +0000

Year One for us was interesting. He was in the army for six months. Year Two we moved in together, which was good but somewhat trying. Year three the GFC hit and his hours were severely cut back. Year four he was unemployed and I was still studying. Challenging does not begin to describe it; we nearly broke up. Five, six and seven have been mixed.

By: NeenerNeener

NeenerNeener — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 22:08:04 +0000

@stuffisthings But we’re supposed to disagree about stuff!
(I just remember one day hitting reply on one of your posts and thinking it might seem like I had it in for you, I don’t remember what it was about, maybe the envelope of cash…)