Sprinting to the finish line isn't always a good thing...

I LOVED what we'll call "He-Man's Most Excellent Graduate School Adventure". It was an awesome experience; great friends, living in one of the most wonderful places on the planet and being minutes away from a bustling city, wooded area for running or hiking and an hour or two from the ocean. And while you may not think of grad school as a time of great security and financial comfort, in a way, it was for us.

Every semester, He-Man's loans would cover his tuition, books, etc., along with a nice living expense check. Combined with the income I made from home school and tutoring, I felt very comfortable. In hindsight, my comfort was a bit of an illusion.

We lived a mile away from an Outlet Mall and I gained a certain affinity for Target. So I often found myself justifying using my paycheck to purchase what I considered necessities. And while many of those things were justified, some were not. I still consider myself fairly frugal but when my pay check was gone, I felt absolutely comfortable putting any leftover expense on the family credit card. It wasn't being used for anything else. I wouldn't want the credit card to get stale and we were already going into debt for school so why not? It was only a small amount of money every time. The red sparkly garland at the 'Harry and David' store's after Christmas sale was only $1.00. At that price I could buy 10 for next year's Christmas. And those GAP fleece jackets were 50% off. We all needed jackets and now we could all have matching ones.

Don't get me wrong, my choices weren't all borderline indifferent. When we decided to go to Disneyland as a family, my ever wise husband agreed to it on the condition that we wouldn't put any vacation expenses toward the ever expanding credit card balance. So for months I scrimped a little more to fund a most awesome family road trip. Still, if I had it my way, we would have purchased a few more souvenirs at Downtown Disney and we would've gone to Sea World. We had the card, right?

5 years later, I 'get it' a little better. I've figured out that personal credit card debt is quite a bit different from school debt AND it comes due a lot sooner. Not only that, the gratification of having matching outfits, which in some cases looks borderline creepy in an Oompa Loompa sort of way, comes with some sacrifices later on. Some, I have decided, may not be worth it.

Case in point: Every Christmas our church congregation collectively gives our bishop, the leader of the church in our neighborhood, extra monetary donations to give those less fortunate a better Christmas. Every year, I have such a desire to give more. Yet, debt has limited us to the amount of service we can render. It has made me sad every year.

Also, our tax return for the past couple of years has been needed to pay down that nasty credit card balance instead of it going towards something more satisfying; such as Lasik eye surgery for He-Man so all the world could see those beautiful baby blues without a layer of spectacles....and so he could play a mean game of soccer without contacts (he doesn't wear them enough for them not cause irritation).

BUT

I'm happy to report that within 3 days of our 10th!!! wedding anniversary, we are thisclose to paying the whole thing off! I'm so excited I can hardly stand it! We certainly can't claim to have done it on our own merits alone because we've had A LOT of support from loved ones who have done so much to encourage us in this goal.

This is where the 'sprinting to the finish line' comes in. I so desperately want to take that last payment out of this month's income-even though we just made a substantial one a week ago. But I know that this is probably one of the only cases where it's more prudent not to. While a lack of prudence didn't necessarily get us into the mess, it certainly agitated it a great deal. And so, I'm resisting the urge to run so hard that I puke at the end and instead I'm determined to trot across the finish line to that nice big, red bow at the end (that won't need to be wiped down and disinfected when we get there.)

With a little divine protection from major financial catastrophe and a better understanding of how to budget and penny pinch, our next ten may be a little more debt free. And that is a very good feeling.