I made the first payment against my student loans this week.

books

My grace period is up and the first payment was due December 1. If I don’t make pay down aggressively, I’ll be making my last payment in 25 years. I’ll be 47. My mother is 47. As I have not even been alive for 25 years, I can’t really wrap my head around that amount of time–maybe it’s not such a big deal after all. Until I graduated, everything happened in four-year (or smaller) increments, so thinking in terms of retirement contributions and 25-year loans is a bit of a psychological adjustment.

One of the most difficult things about adjusting to the loan payments is that it’s the opposite of delayed gratification. I’m very good at delaying gratification with my money, saving for something until I can afford it–then again, that’s easy when the most expensive thing you’ve ever bought is a $500 Jamaican vacation. (My car–my poor, miserable beater of a car–was all hand-me-down, as my computers have been.) I just got my credit card, so the only thing I’ve bought on credit is one tank of gas. Which is all to say that loan payments are a boring way to spend your money. I’m used to handing over the cash and getting some sort of awesome thing to play with, or at least the joy of watching a bank balance rise–even a rent check is fun when it’s still novel and cool to be in your own apartment.

There is nothing fun at all about a debt payment. I imagine it would be even worse if I was paying against a car I was no longer driving, or a credit card bill for things I’d already lost interest in. I am completely passionate about the school I went to, the education I received and the fun I had, and think that my debt is a good investment–still, having to actually make the payments is completely lame.

It’s also–at minimum payments–21.8% of my net income. I’m finding this completely manageable, maybe because I’m a good budgeter, or maybe because it just has to be. What’s scary is that my debt load, while significant and higher than average, isn’t anything like the kind of thing journalists write scary articles about, or even the worst that I know of. Friends–particularly friends with family situations that left them without reliable cosigners, or who got their grace periods eaten up by paperwork malfunctions–are in even choppier waters. I believe that a whole generation over here is going to get in trouble by delaying mortgages and retirement contributions in favor of student loan payments.

As far as I can tell there are two silver linings (well, besides the education I got, which I really do think was worth it). The first is that the size of my student loan payments, together with the amount I save, is forcing me to live on less than 70% of my (net) salary. If I can keep my cost of living from inflating faster than my salary, that proportion could result in some pretty sweet savings in a few, you know, decades. The second is, of course, that I have Queercents to share my inner turmoil with as I move through the process of repaying my loans!