While many people advocate going to school and getting an education, the reality is that education costs are more expensive than most people realize. Canada thankfully provides reasonably priced educations compared to the rest of the world, but it is far from free. Given that I grew up in Chilliwack, and that I had to move out to Vancouver to attend UBC, I spent approximately $11,000 per 8-month period, which included housing on the UBC campus along with a university food program (which tasted fairly similar to prison food, I imagine). Of those costs, approximately $3,000 went towards tuition, ...

I’ve been waiting for a rather big cheque to finish clearing in my account this past week. I woke up this morning, logged into my online banking, and noticed it had cleared, so I decided I would finally make the call I have waited almost ten years to make, and pay off my first student loan. At one point I had nearly $40,000 in student loans, something that seems almost insurmountable when you finish school. But unfortunately, that is the high price of an education nowadays, and banks sure don’t seem to mind capitalizing on that. Back in March I paid the final $8,000 of my car, and today I ...

Placed call #2 a few seconds ago. My BC student loan of $682.47 is now officially gone too, freeing up a whopping $30 a month back into my pockets. Happy trails, student loan. I have one last student loan remaining, valued at $1,630. I’ll try to knock it off sometime soon as well. ...

I just wrote myself a $12,000 cheque, which represents money saved up on various web projects over the last year or so. Since leaving Vancouver, I’ve been living fairly frugally (in fact, I probably have only paid myself about 25% of what I was making in Vancouver), mainly because I wanted to once and for all be done with my student loans and finally be debt free. In March, I dropped the last $8,000 on my car, finally becoming the official owner of a 2006 Mazda 3 Sport. Given that the car I had before that was a totally junky 1993 Toyota Tercel, I’m obviously pretty proud of myself for buying ...

I’ve slowly been chipping away at my loans these last few years, hoping for that day to come when I’ll be debt free. My net worth is positive, thanks to some RRSPs and the down payment I put into my car, but having debt hanging over your head obviously kind of sucks. I have a little spreadsheet that sort of tracks where I’m at. In April of 2008 I owed around $25,500 in both student loans and car loans. At my peak, I had around $40,000 worth of student loans, a fairly hefty debt load by anyone’s standards. Back in January I finally paid my car off. The payments on that were $400 per month, ...