ruthbrarian’s avatarruthbrarian’s Twitter Archive—№ 5,362

        1. I have mixed feelings about sharing good news in these times but... after nearly 13 years, we paid off my husband's student loans.
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      1. …in reply to @ruthbrarian
        I'm still flashing to when we were just married and I was coming to grips with being 21, unemployed, and married to someone who was over $100,000 in debt. Getting a PhD with negative generational wealth and scholarships but no stipend is incredibly expensive.
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    1. …in reply to @ruthbrarian
      But unlike him, I had generational wealth. Not like The Rich wealth, but the kind middle class white families can accrue. Enough that between 4 scholarships and a college account from my grandfather, I had no loans of my own. That was something.
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  1. …in reply to @ruthbrarian
    We didn't get here by grit and moral fiber. If we were relying just on that, it would've taken way longer. It took something like a decade to get the loans under $100,000, especially since he was doing adjunct work and I was a paraprofessional making ~$30,000 in DC for many years
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    1. …in reply to @ruthbrarian
      We were paying something like $12,000/year on the loans and $7,000 or $5,000 would go to interest. We could record that on our taxes, which was good but it always made me physically ill to read the statement.
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      1. …in reply to @ruthbrarian
        So how did we pay them off? My parents are dead. I keep wanting to call my mom and tell her but the fact that she died before my father retired and then that my father didn't outlive his retirement savings are how we paid this off.
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        1. …in reply to @ruthbrarian
          My father was a well-paid programmer who was able to save for retirement. This was counterbalanced by his destructive choices and health crises which led to his having to go into assisted living before he was 70.
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          1. …in reply to @ruthbrarian
            But he didn't outlive his savings. Now we are debt-free. And this is what small scale generational wealth looks like. It is nowhere near millions. It is still utterly life-changing.
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            1. …in reply to @ruthbrarian
              I really really wish I could call my mom and tell her.
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