Student Loans. Uuuuuuuggggggghhhhhhhh

Where should I begin?

Student loans make-up most of our ʻohana’s debt. Do I regret it? No. But it continues to have an impact on our (financial) future. And one thing they don’t warn you about when taking out student loans is the possibility of marrying someone with just as much student loans as you–that’s right, double the amount of student loans in our hale. If things had gone “according to plan,” meaning the $250k salary that I wouldy supposedly be earning, sure, we would’ve paid off our student loans by now.

Nevertheless, here we are still with student loan debt.

Then 2020 happens and student loan payments have been put on hold in light of impacts due to COVID-19. Not only that, enter: Biden + Harris which included promises to cancel/forgive student loan debt.

Before re-committing to this budgeting journey at the end of 2019, and there still occasional moments now, it often feels very lonely and a pipe dream to be able to fully pay off our student loans. It also quickly becomes overwhelming thinking about more important goals like buying a house, or saving for our kids’ college funds to set them up for success and not to have to incur the same kind of debt as we have. And in case you didn’t know, student loan payments ain’t cheap! Our student loan payments equates what many pay for their mortgage.

To be honest, I’ve often hoped, dreamed, and prayed for some type of miracle to help with our student loan payments. Did I imagine it would come in the form of COVID-19? No. But perhaps that is another silver-lining that came from this pandemic.

Even in light of the uncertainty and changes that came in 2020, we were still able to pay off one of my student loans that was lingering since I graduated from college over decade ago. It doesn’t seem like much, but it felt huge! This was the first moment where I actually felt like we were making progress to paying off our student loan debt.

Having a plan and recommitting to our journey to become debt free has helped ease some of the feelings of helplessness in ever paying off our student loans. Kamaka Dias launched his Race to $50K, and his story to pay off his student loans by doing various jobs has been so inspiring! That was another source of motivation to stay the course, and reminder that we too can pay off our student loans one day.

I’ll continue to follow Biden+Harris’ student loan forgiveness/cancellation efforts, and find ways to support those initiatives. Sure, me and my ʻohana will personally gain from this type of forgiveness, but I also know many like me who are crippled by student loan debt. The current discussion is around forgiving $10,000. It would take me almost a year and a half to pay off $10,000 of student loan debt. That’s just mind-boggling!

It’s been a little over a year since me and my ʻohana have (re-)committed to budgeting with the goals of paying off our debt, saving for a house, and many other goals. It’s a bit ironic, and in some ways helpful, that 2020 ended up being what it has been. Heck, it’s even strange thinking about how drastically things have changed since I first shared on my blog about our journey to becoming debt free back in February. In many ways, our habits were changed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but many other changes that impacted our finances came with that too. Thinking back on the year that was 2020, I am simply amazed and still trying to wrap my head around all that has happened this year…and it’s not over yet!

I anticipate this being a multi-part series of blog posts, but here it goes…

At the end of 2019, we had set out finance-related goals in 2020 to pay down debt, save, and ultimately just execute the plan, the budgeting plan. I was introduced to Kumiko Love, The Budget Mom (“TBM”), through a friend, and we have been following her Budget by Paycheck method.

Then 2020 happens. Need I say more? We’ve experienced job losses, job gains, changes in income, we started our own business, we moved, and changes in bills. And that’s just the skinny on the finance-related changes!

Despite these changes, I think the greatest thing that we’ve gained is peace of mind. Peace of mind in the sense that we at least have a plan and are more aware about where our money is going.

Reflecting on the financial-related goals we set out to accomplish this year, I am damn proud. Even in light of the changes that came with 2020, we still managed to pay down some debt, reached our goal in saving for our peace fund (which we’ve defined as the amount to cover 3 months of expenses in the event of an emergency), and also fully funded our sinking funds.

But again, perhaps a pandemic silver-lining that we are benefiting from is the ways in which we were forced to truly re-focus on the things that matter most. We stayed home, and didn’t go out and spend money like we would’ve done in a “normal” year. And these change in habits not only benefited our monthly spending/saving, but also the ability to roll over much of our sinking funds to next year. On top of that, much of what we saved for with our sinking funds we ended up just cash flowing.

Habits that we’ve gained this year have definitely changed our mindset on money. Sinking funds have been a huuuuge game changer! This will help us not fall back into more debt. Also, while the TBM’s method typically encourages using cash and cash envelopes, we did use cash at the beginning, but switched to cashless during the pandemic. Something that we also stopped early on in this process is no longer using credit cards, with the exception of Costco gas. Or if we do use our credit card, we pay it off immediately.