101 Update ~ #1 Pay Off My Student Loan

Woooooooooooooooohooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Words can barely contain the excitement of accomplishing #1 on my 101 Things in 1001 Days list: pay off my student loan. When I put this on the list, I thought the deadline of December 1, 2008 was really ambitious. And here it is, October 24, 2007 and it is done! Oh, the power of setting ambitious deadlines!

How this came about was really pretty funny, a little lame and impacts #65, go to Punta Cana. Last year Justin and I cancelled our 5-year wedding anniversary trip to an apparently 5-star resort on an island in the Dominican Republic because it wasn't really finished being built. It was a major disappointment for us, but we tucked the money away and decided that for our next anniverary we would definitely have a beach vacation in Punta Cana.

Well, as we started talking about it and planning it in the past few weeks we came across a variety of little challenges. Our enthusiasm was a bit dampened, and we were discouraged. Finally I said to Justin that maybe this meant that we really shouldn't go, maybe we should keep the money and start planning for our next trip. And then he said, "Maybe we should pay off your student loan."

Double take.

What? I suddenly felt this wash of joy over me. I started to laugh. I thought, okay, this is kind of lame that I am so much more excited about the prospect of paying off my student loan than I am about walking on a beach in February! But it was the truth. The more we thought about it, the better we felt about it. We could see all the possibilities it opened up for us financially and more.

So I wrote the cheque. Put it in an envelope with a "way to go" sticker" and put it in the mail. It has cleared. And today it is offical - I am student-loan free!!!!!