$0.00 is the amount I have left to pay on my student loans. Bizarrely enough, a ticker-tape parade was not thrown in my honor when my very last monthly payment came out of my bank account. Indeed, I'm fairly certain that the only direct acknowledgement of the accomplishment that I did receive was a dip to my credit score. (A scam if I ever knew one.) To see the balance for myself, I needed to open a new online account with the latest servicer in a line whose count I've lost track of. This loan is paid in full.
It's maybe gauche to write about, but it's not every day that the monthly debt I've paid for the last twenty-one years gets whittled down to zero, so here I am, throwing my own parade. My student loan story is one born of privilege. I'm a kid from a family whose parents couldn't afford to send me to the fancy colleges they were proud for me to attend, but there was a big old house and an equity line that could be leveraged to pay for the portion they did cover. There was a generous private scholarship and the mantle of generational wealth, no matter how piddling, that gave me the confidence to take out the loans in the first place, the assurance that I wouldn't be utterly crushed by the weight of what I was signing up for. There are two fancy degrees with my name on them.