NOTE: This article was co-authored by Kubo Queen.
I wish Kubo Queen and I were more disciplined, but the truth is that we’re not perfect. When it comes down to it, we are just like any other humans with things we desire. And, sometimes, we yield to those desires. At the start of my student debt journey, Kubo Queen and I made a deal to not eat one of my favorite foods until my student loans were paid off in full — sushi. As you might know, eating sushi at a sushi restaurant can be quite expensive. Even though I am fortunate enough to live in a city with many all-you-can-eat sushi restaurants, those deals still cost around $25.00 per person. It’s definitely not the most expensive meal you can have going out, but for someone like me who owed over $35,000 in student loans at the time, there were better things to use the $25.00 for. So we made a promise to ourselves that we would only start going out for sushi again as soon as we paid off my student loans…
A week before my final student loan payment, Kubo Queen and I had both taken a day off from work to help her uncle out in the morning. As we finished helping him out by noon, Kubo Queen and I found ourselves together at lunch time. This was a rare occurrence since we’re usually both at our jobs during the workweek. So we decided to enjoy the day and treat ourselves to some food at some restaurant. However, we couldn’t think of which restaurant to eat at. Did we want to have some pho? Some Mexican? Chinese? Or, heck, Chipotle??? None of them sounded delicious at that particular moment. And so, eventually, Kubo Queen and I joked about getting some sushi instead. It was tempting, but we still had one more week left until my student loans were paid off. I mean, damn, it had been about 9 months since we’d had some sushi. Surely, we could wait it out for one more week and keep our promise. But after a lot of back-and-forth and justifications of how we deserved it right then, we couldn’t hold off any longer. So we drove straight to our favorite sushi restaurant for lunch.
I stuffed my face with salmon, tuna, yellow tail, mackerel, and albacore nigiri. I also had a few of the spicy scallops, and one rainbow roll. Kubo Queen loves salmon nigiri so she ate nothing but those. Looking back, it was a nice celebratory meal together (even though I still had a week to go). We both enjoyed ourselves. We didn’t even blink an eye when the $50 bill came. It was pretty glorious. This was one of the two things we wanted to do as soon as we became debt free.
The other thing we wanted to do was to spend the money we would have paid towards my student loans from one paycheck on things we wanted to have. After that paycheck, we would start directing that money to investments and savings, but we wanted to see how much we could have been buying with that money if we had chosen to spend it all. So at the middle of my student debt journey, we made a list of things we wanted to buy as soon as we became debt free. This is the list of things we wanted:
- Two Mizuno Japan Yusho Judo Gis (Kubo King)
- New leggings for the gym (Kubo Queen)
- New t-shirts (Kubo Queen)
- Sunglasses (Kubo Queen)
- Two high quality All-Clad non-stick frying pans (Kubo)
- Two sets of Corelle plates (Kubo)
- Oven mitts (Kubo)
- New tongs for cooking (Kubo)
- Glass water containers (Kubo)
- Glass tupperwares (Kubo)
- A new broom (Kubo)
As you can see, the list is nothing to really write home about. I wanted to treat myself to some new Judo gis. I’ve wanted those particular ones for about a year and a half, but I thought I should wait until I accomplished something big. It occured to me that paying off my student loans in 9 months was a pretty big accomplishment. So I decided to get those gis as a reward to myself. They are very high quality, made in Japan, Judo gis that will last forever. As for Kubo Queen, she finally got tired of rotating the same two leggings for her workouts at the gym (she strength trains six days a week). So I pushed her to buy three new pairs to add to her collection (she was originally thinking of only buying two more pairs). She also lost her freebie sunglasses somewhere during a road trip last December, so she’s been wanting a good quality replacement for the sunny days where we live.
The rest of the items on the list are for our Kubo. Kubo Queen and I enjoy cooking meals at home. So we naturally wanted to upgrade some of our kitchenware. For example, we bought two high quality All-Clad non-stick frying pans (an 8 inch and a 10 inch, which are made in America), and two sets of Corelle plates (also made in America). We also bought glass tupperwares and glass water jugs to replace the plastic ones we still had, as we don’t think it’s very healthy to eat and drink out of plastic every single day.
In total, the items cost us about $1,263. This means we spent less than what I paid in student loans every paycheck, even though we bought everything we wanted without worrying about the price (I paid $1,500 towards my student loans every paycheck).
Finally, Kubo Queen’s parents were so happy and excited for us becoming debt free that they wanted to join us in our celebration. Since we jumped the gun on eating sushi a week early, we’re taking them out this weekend instead for a big meal at our favorite Chicago-style deep dish pizza place. We’ll be having two pizzas for the table and beers all around, on the Kubo.
Letting loose and buying some things we’ve been wanting this week was fun. But this experience confirmed what we already knew all along, which is that getting new stuff didn’t make us any happier than we already were before. We actually get more pleasure out of doing fun things together, and the things we want the most can’t be bought — for example, to become better at Judo, to get stronger at lifting, to improve our mental health, and to do meaningful things at work. Now we’re ready to get back to the grind on our financial goals. I already changed my 401K contribution at work to 41% of my paycheck, which will max out my 401K contribution for the rest of the year. We’re also putting the rest of the money that’s been going towards my loans into our savings account for emergencies and a future downpayment on a house. Kubo Queen will be continuing to max out her IRA account since she’s still a PhD student in school.
But don’t you worry, after all the savings and investing we will still be able to have some fun. In June, we will be going to Las Vegas for USA Judo Nationals (I’m competing), and in December we are planning to go to the Philippines for the holidays with my whole family. It will be my first time back to the Philippines since I left when I was 11 years old (and of course, it will be Kubo Queen’s first time ever). These will round out a good year for us at the Kubo, making progress on our goals and also finding time to do things we love.
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