Hey debt fighters! We have another dear debt letter from Free. Check out her blog.
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Dear Debt,
This is the first time that I’ve acknowledged you but you have been in my life for almost 2 years. At first, I loved you. I needed you. I had no job, no money and a baby. I just finished undergraduate school and thought that graduate school was just the next step in my life.
I was fortunate enough to graduate undergrad without you, but I refused to let my mother pay for another semester of school. So I decided to take out 20k of you. You-Student loan debt. I told myself that you would cover my tuition and my child’s nursery tuition for an entire year (emphasis on entire).
Yes, you paid for my degree but you only paid for 5 months of my child’s tuition. Apparently, tuition wasn’t the only thing you paid for. Where did that money go? What about the other 5 months? Oh, I recall now.
You went to plane tickets that you didn’t use. To Chinese food. To pizza. To subways. To clothes. To lending money (without it being returned) And 1000 of you went to a “boyfriend” to help pay for his rent and to bail him out of jail.
You see debt. You are more than just “borrowed money” You are a reflection of me. Spending money that I didn’t have to feel loved. To feel validated. Just to end up feeling BROKE.
But I did have your interest. $2000 worth of interest. Your initial 20k turned into over 22k. So this is a break up letter debt. I packed peanut butter sandwiches to work, sacrificed clothes and anything else to pay you off. Now you are down to $9100.
It feels like it took forever to get down to 4 digits. This calls for a celebration. A free celebration of course. Now I’m wiser. Now I know that I have to be INTENTIONAL with how I use you and money. You debt are not all bad. You have a good side to you.
You give people the opportunity to get things that they could not get on their own and much faster. Debt. Money. Thank you for helping me get a Masters degree at 23 and land an Amazing first job. But our relationship. You and I. Are over!
-Freefromfoolishness
(Editor’s note: Free is now debt-free! Congrats!)
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2 comments
>You debt are not all bad. You have a good side to you.
This is something I’ve struggled to learn over the years. When you grow up your whole life with an older brother that gets non-stop calls from debt collectors, you end up with a healthy fear of any debt whatsoever. But it’s important to understand that it’s okay to have some debt sometimes.
This is a good one! I’m slowlyyyyyy getting out of debt as well.