One of the major reasons why this step is so difficult for us is that our debts don’t seem real. My husband rarely even looks at the student loan statement. For years when we received information about our student loan totals he just put them in the drawer somewhere. Out of sight, out of mind. In some ways I can understand how he felt. The only way for him to finish college was to take out loans. The only way for him to increase his income was to go to college. What was the point of stressing himself out with how much it was costing when we knew we didn’t have the money to pay for it? Currently, the loans are still in deferment. So we have no monthly payments. To me, it seems like now is the perfect time to start making voluntary payments. We can pay what we can, when we can, so that when the payments become mandatory, at least we will have made a significant dent in the principle. It seems like most monthly debt payments are made up primarily of interest earned. But bottom line, we can’t afford the payments now and we’re not sure if when or how we will be able to afford them in the future. My husband’s response is to try and ignore them. If the bills aren’t coming, then the payments are not a priority. I do the reverse. I almost constantly obsess over them. I scrape every dime I can out of the budget in the hopes of making miniscule monthly payments. But when I look at the big picture, my attempts at $20 or $30 a month payments will take about 100 years to pay off these loans. I know that Trent recommends slowly but surely, but I feel like I’m creeping at less than a snail’s pace.
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