They gave us the world, and if they had it, they’d give us money too
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.
You’d think the second 50k would be easier; it wasn’t paying off debt, it was for ourselves. We were going to buy a house! Everyone else our age seemed to already be settled, a few years into their mortgage. Everyone else seemed to have gotten help from their parents.
We knew not to expect financial help from ours. They gave us the world, and if they had it, they’d give us money too. But they had none to give, so we knew it was us alone. Which is empowering… but sometimes you just want a leg up.
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