Last January, I posted about how Sarah and I paid off her student loans, and I joked about all the things we could have bought instead. Today we did our part to continue the recession by paying off the remaining balance on my loans as well. There goes $10,723.85. This brings the grand total we've paid off to ... wait for it ... $20,623.60. Just think of all the loot we could've had.

As you might suspect, this has considerably reduced the amount of cash we have on hand for a down payment on a house when we move this summer. However, because I'm looking for as much scholarship aid as possible for seminary next year, it's probably best that we don't show a large sum of money in our savings when I apply for scholarships later this winter. If, between winter and summer, we can't manage to scrape together enough money for a 20% down payment, we'll just live in a tent or something.

What's great about paying off the loans now is that (a) we'll save over $5,000 in interest payments over the next 10 years, and (b) we're now entirely debt free.

We'll see how long that lasts.