Getting out of debt: Three student loans down seven to go

Back in January I wrote kind of a depressing post about how much I hated paying student loan interest and how annoying it was to live with student loan debt.  All that is still true - but I do have some happy news to report. 

We were able to pay off one of Brandon's student loans today.  The amount equaled three monthly payment squares.  Check out the payment tracker now.  We only have 10.5 years left and we are now over a year ahead of schedule.  

And here is what the total amount of student loans over time looks like.  If you look really close you can see that Fedloan #3 no longer appears on the chart. As you can see in the grand scheme of things, paying off this student loan was a rather small accomplishment.  But I can't tell you how nice it is to know that we have one less loan to worry about.

Most of the money we used to pay the loan came from money that I saved from our tax refund.  I could have used the money to pay off the loan back when we got our refund in February, but I didn't want to move it out of savings until we were settled in Alabama.  Having that extra money in savings definitely helped with my peace of mind while we moved.  

Brandon's income has increased so we are hoping to start making double payments on the loans.  My plan is to keep paying the minimum amount on the loans every month while putting the extra amount into a special savings account.  Then every time that savings account equals the amount of the smallest loan I'll pay off the loan.  That way we still have extra money available in case of an emergency or something.

If things go according to plan we'll be out of debt within the next 5 years.  And then we'll start saving up for our big vacation to Reunion Island.  I love that the more we debt we pay off the more we can see of the pictures of Reunion that are hiding under the monthly payment squares.  I'll be so happy when all those squares are gone!