$0.00 Yayyyyyyyyyyy! -$1500 Oh crap!

Good news everyone, the student loan balance has been KO'd by the mighty Dreese financial assault squad on Friday, 9/24/10. It's been a long journey and we've finally reached the end! That's the good news.

The bad news is that before Amber and I decided just to pay them off (thanks to some extra money in checking), I had submitted a payment to AES for $1500. Hey there ho there, no problem, they have a "Cancel Payment" link on their website which I took advantage of so I could just go through the payoff process instead. Yesterday I come to find out that AES never processed the cancel payment, so on top of the almost $2500 it took for payoff, they decided to help themselves to the $1500 as well. Gulp.

Upon further investigation it looks like they can only issue a refund by check, which can take up to 30 days. Such service after paying out balance 28 years ahead of schedule! Ironically our biggest financial emergency in a while happens after we've paid off our debt - did not see that coming. To further annoy us, transfering money from savings (ING direct) takes 2 business days, and we had to pay a $185 fee for helping us with our bee situation, so looks like we're in the poorhouse for the time being.

For those looking for the juicy details of the the student loans I made a post on reddit so you can check it out there. Financial success - ahoy!

The end is nigh

I talk a big game, but it's mostly just that: talk. Here I am telling everyone how awesomely frugal we are by paying off the student loans in record time, yet in the last 6 months or our cell phone bill has doubled and as of this weekend we've joined the rest of the drooling masses with a satellite tv subscription.

It's been 3 or 4 years since Amber and I have had tv, and aside from sports I haven't missed it a whole lot. Thanks to the mighty interwebs we've been able to keep up to date on the shows that we like to watch, but it could never scratch the live sports itch. Along comes football season and I caved like something that caves in very easily (masterful writing, Dan).

Not only have I all but abandoned P90x (at least volleyball is started this week, I get to play tonight and tomorrow), but (confirming my fears about getting tv in the first place) I was practically welded to the couch all weekend. How on earth is anyone supposed to get anything done with football on all weekend? I will admit I got antsy a couple of times enough to wash the miata, change the oil on the motorcycle (you'd think this should be easier), take a walk, and do some work outside, but overall I felt incredibly unproductive.

Counter to negativity the previous three paragraphs convey, I'm actually quite happy and everything seems to be going really well! Life has been treating me well, and for that I am very thankful :)

Update? We don't need no stinking update.

Aside from the student-loan-debt-counter falling to $2,474.68 (balance as of today), there isn't a whole lot going on. Amber just complained about checking the website and seeing the picture of the snake (so I've included an awesome bear-explosion-atv picture instead).

We're both very excited and we feel that we will easily be able to pay off the loans by the end of October (next month!). What then, you ask? Well, mostly saving money I guess. We don't have much in terms of a proper emergency fund (the goal would be to have 6 months of expenses) and I'd like to re-start my Roth IRA and start one for Amber. I have a feeling that the "extra" money we'll have no longer going to student loan payments will be gone quicker than we'd like. We'll also get to start some work on the house which will be great!

Amber is still plugging along with volleyball and I have done my best to completely avoid my commitment to P90x. Is anyone surprised? Instead I've been trying to find ways to busy myself around the house as to not feel completely worthless.