January 28, 2022 marked my one year anniversary of paying off my student loans . Reflecting back on choosing to pay off my student loans leaves me with several take a ways that I want to share with you! In September 2020 I decided to become debt free by utilizing the debt snowball method to pay off all my debt. Before this I had struggled to save and really understand basic financial principles. As a first-generation college student, I received a scholarship to attend undergrad for free, but the scholarship did not cover summers. During the summers I took out student loans to cover costs without paying interest rates or how much I was taking out. By the end of undergrad I had amassed a little under $17K. Fast forward to graduate school I received another scholarship that covered my education. At the time I was a teacher in a new very expensive city and I had missed the cutoff to have my paycheck last me throughout the summer. So, I decided to take out a loan for two summers to ...
Today is the 31 st anniversary of the American’s with Disabilities Act and Disability Pride Month! In case you didn’t know t his important civil rights law works to ensure all people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else (Social Media: Tweets & Posts, n.d). What a month to show your support for the disability community! This past week I attended the Association on Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD) summer conference in Austin, Texas and the opening speaker was Andréa LaVant one of the producers of Crip Camp. She told her story of growing up as a Black disabled women and how it affected her. What stood out to me the most was that while she had been taught about Black pride she had never been taught about disability pride. Figure 1: This is a thumbnail of my latest YouTube video “Let’s Talk about Disability Pride” with a black colored fist that reads Support Disability Rights. As a former Special Education teacher I remember talking abo...