I've been a lurker on this subreddit for years. I've read hundreds of great stories of people paying down debt and finally being free of the burden that is student loans - I couldn't wait to finally tell our story. For the last 8 years my wife and I have been aggressively paying off down our loan debt with our eyes on long-term financial goals. We lived modestly, we meal-prepped, we budgeted, we closely followed a number of 'best practices' with a single goal in mind of getting rid of that loan.
The big day finally came in April - we scheduled our final lump payment and watched our balance finally go to 0. I haven't been that excited in quite a while - the emotional wave hit us that we were financially free of loan debt that troubles millions of students. We went out that night to a high-end steakhouse and celebrated, it was 8 years in the making.
Little did we know, that day was also the day our financial habits went to absolute shit.
It started small. We went out for a few extra dinners each week - hell we just got rid of a $800/mo payment plus extra lump payments some months upwards of $3-4K - we deserved it and could afford to eat out more. The following week on a whim I bought that new golf driver I had my eye on - I mean every extra dime we had went towards loans for the last 8 years, I deserved to splurge on a new club. The next month my wife went on an impromptu Vegas trip with her friends - shit, she hasn't been on a trip in years and earned it. Rinse/Repeat. Rinse/Repeat.
2 months later we racked up more than $9k on our credit cards by telling ourselves the same 'we deserve it, we can afford it now' story over and over. Just like that we went from being the most financially responsible people we knew to a couple of fools.
Moral of the story - beware of the financial cliff after a big success. Paying off that loan that quick was one of the greatest financial achievements we may have, we weren't prepared for the emotional freedom of being burden free post-loan and it cost us dearly for a few months until we righted the ship.
Submitted July 14, 2017 at 01:44PM by Stand_Patrick_Harris http://ift.tt/2tUh5jm
