Thirty-Three Cents

When I received my Master's Degree from Emerson College, I honestly do not remember how much money I owed in student loans. It was somewhere upwards of sixty or seventy thousand dollars. My parents graciously helped me out with undergrad, but for any post-graduate education, I was on my own, which meant I was living off of loans. Before I took out living expense loans my bank account was often in the double digits. I have the distinct memory of overdrafting at Taco Bell on my lunch break and realizing that my Crunchwrap Supreme had somehow cost me $35.

When I took out my loans I intended to pay them off in one lump sum, I’d direct a blockbuster movie, pay off all my debts, and go on to live my dreams. It seemed like it might go that way for a bit, I got a part-time job editing web content for real brands, and I started receiving paychecks that contained something I had never seen before, a comma (not always, but when I did, what a rush).

Future blockbuster directing power couple Madeline and Justin Poirier. Circa 2008.?Photo Credit: Sofia Hultquist

When my loans finally started to trickle in, I requested the twenty-five-year repayment plan, as opposed to the ten. Even at that, I was spending over $350 a month. Then another loan payment came in at $130. Then another at $250. For the next ten years, I spent over $700 every month on my student loans and never missed a payment. Even when I was on unemployment, I never let them slip.?

But what kind of difference does $700 a month make in your life? It’s a question I used to ask myself as I watched my credit card debt balloon, or when my wife and I tried to move out of our one-bedroom basement apartment in Brighton. For four years we saw the same rental listings keeping pace with our income without so much as a new coat of paint (in some instances they didn’t even update the pictures). We had elaborate fantasies about places we could afford, if only we could corral a few friends into sleeping on bunk beds and futons. While I lived in Boston the amount I paid in rent, barely edged out the student loans for my top bill every month.

Eventually, my wife and I were given the opportunity to move into my in-law's house, while they waited to sell it. This is the only reason we were able to afford the house we live in today. Since we purchased this property, we have watched the market skyrocket in a twisted mixture of horror and glee. Knowing that your investment is appreciating is wonderful, but if everything is more expensive, so is the next house that you’re moving into when you run out of space.

America’s Sweethearts pictured here with their most recent (only) real estate investment. Circa 2017.

Before my wife and I bought the house, we talked about having children, but it seemed impossible. I was commuting to Boston, and most days, I was really only home to sleep. When the house needed a new roof, six months in, it’s not like we had that money lying around. So we took out more loans, and continued to watch our credit card debt fatten like an engorged tick. Then I got laid off.

Four months later my wife was pregnant with our son.

Fortunately, through a lot of hard work, and a lot of luck, I have been able to secure enough work to afford to pay ahead on my student loans, and on this past Monday. After thirteen years, I believed I had paid them off. I submitted the payment for the full amount, and then spent the next day furiously refreshing the page on the website until I saw that it had cleared.

I don’t want to calculate how much I spent on student loans, or how that fracture spiderwebbed into other debts and anxieties, but I know that what seems like a purely financial burden affected every part of my life, and I’m extremely privileged. In my first four years of college, I incurred no debt, as an adult, I had a good job in the field that I studied, and I got to live in a house at huge savings for a whole year! That is not the case for a lot of people. For so many, student loans are the elephant lurking in the corner of every room they walk into. When I talk to friends who have had their federal loans frozen during the pandemic, they gush about the ways their lives have changed, but their specter still looms on the horizon.

Before I got into graduate school, I had two degrees, and the best job I could get was a? minimum wage sales position at Guitar Center (technically I did sell enough guitars to make a meager commission twice). I spent an entire summer looking for retail work, and no one would hire me. I think about that every time I hear about people with student loans, people that followed every rule with the promise that they would be professionally rewarded when they graduated. Everyone’s situation is different, but when we talk about student loans and this generation of millennials it’s important to remember that we entered the workforce as the markets collapsed in 2008 and found ourselves the beneficiary of a phenomenon where all of the entry-level jobs were replaced with unpaid internships. A number of people I knew opted not to pay their student loans at all, others just didn’t bother to finish their degrees.?

The most depressing part about student loans is not the ways they’ve handicapped this generation, but the fact that so many have paid off so much, and barely scraped the surface of their principal balance. There’s no shortage of stories on the internet about people that have been paying for years, only to realize that they currently owe more than they borrowed. I got lucky and this was never my situation, but it could have been.

As I sat there, refreshing my screen, watching for the balance to zero out something unexpected occurred. In the time that it took for my payment to process, my loans had accrued thirty-three cents in interest.

People have been trying to solve this problem, and while I don’t know what the perfect solution is, I know that the current trajectory of doing nothing isn’t helping. Canceling student debt (some, all, any, even just the interest), would make a dramatic difference in the lives of so many hard-working brilliant people that I know that just want to walk into a room and not have to check the corners for elephants. I want that for them, it feels pretty fucking good.

I paid the thirty-three goddamn cents.

Screenshot Credit: Justin Poirier