They gave us the world, and if they had it, they’d give us money too

I

was never a math person. Numbers always felt a little too concrete for me. But life is life and sometimes we have to become friends with those we’d rather avoid. Like numbers.

I needed the numbers to equal a magical 50k. Honestly, the number wasn’t that magical, but it was the number we arrived at after meeting with a mortgage broker and considering how much we’d need to put down on a house and cover closing and moving costs.

It took two years to pay off our student and car loan debts, totaling close to $50,000. I have a video of my husband pressing “pay” on our final payment in the student loan portal, and I remember the feeling in the pit of my stomach fighting the looseness in my chest when our savings account dropped to zero.