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 keep
Hey guys! Ms. Duggan is back! I know it’s been awhile since I updated my blog but as you know I was working in Italy as a mental health clinician on an archaeological dig site. Don’t worry you will get ALL the details later. I’m finally back at work and getting back to my normal busy life and things are going well so far. But around the time I got back into the swing of things I had a major doctoral catastrophe! (Figure 1: This is a thumbnail of my latest YouTube video “My Doctoral Horror Story” where I am looking at the camera with a terrified look.) While I was away, I was still enrolled in two courses that had been going pretty well. I actually finished one while I was in Italy and received an A in the course. The other course had one last assignment due that I planned to finish once I got back to the states. However, to my surprise it was due while I was in Italy and I was totally not prepared to finish it. (Figure 2: This is a photo of Ms. Jay, an African American male fashion