So! I now have a definite date for the zeroing-out of my debt. I've already privately emailed one friend about it, but I may as well make this public: July 16, 2020 will be the day I send out my final payment to the Navient bloodsuckers* who took over the management of my debt from Sallie Mae. As I've mentioned several times, I plan to celebrate this. It might be a week-long party, and money will not be spent wisely. I can't party until my next payday, however, and that's not until August 16, very close to my fifty-first birthday, so maybe I'll save the partying for my birthday, which is on the 31st of that month. Later in the year, around October, I'm planning to fly to Qatar to meet a friend. Yeah, yeah—Qatar is a hotbed of terrorism. I'm well aware. But it's also a fabulously rich country that is part of the food-mecca renaissance happening in many places in the Middle East. And for a teetotaling monastic like yours truly, Muslim countries aren't as suffocating as they are for people who love to do nothing but drink and fuck. My only problem is my religious liberalism: I'll have to keep my mouth shut about one of my favorite topics of discussion. Shutting my mouth shouldn't be a problem: I'll be constantly shoveling food into it, so there'll be no time to talk God.
Will I be totally debt-free come July? Of course not. I've still got a bit of credit-card debt, but that's negligible by comparison, and it's easily paid down. Meanwhile, we've topped the rise of 2020, and the remaining debt-repayment appears to me as a long, downhill slope. At long last, I'll be coasting my way to financial freedom. This is happening a few months later than advertised, I grant; I had said I'd be done with my scholastic debt by sometime in the spring, and now, instead, I'll be done in midsummer. There have been many bumps in the road, which is one reason for the delay. But better late than never, eh?
*I'm just being dramatic. Navient's actually proved to be a decent steward of my debt: they have low interest rates, and their website is actually much easier to use than Sallie Mae's.
Congrats on your soon to be debt free status! Used to live in Qatar, albeit back in '91-95. Sure it's much better developed now, but I would recommend visiting the Corniche, the pyramid shaped Sheraton hotel in West Bay and doing some wadi bashing (4wd tours of the desert with Bedouin feasts included). Food wise, start with a shawarma, fetira and hummus, finished off with muhallabia, and leave any ideas of keto back at ICN.
ReplyDeleteGreat news, you've worked hard to reach this goal. Yeah, oddly enough, I have no desire to visit Qatar in particular or the Middle East in general. But it sounds like it might be your cup of tea, er, plate of food, so enjoy!
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