The Payoff! Plan

Back in 2003-2004, I borrowed $31,064.02 to attend graduate school.  This was okay at the time, as I was following the conventional wisdom to not borrow for education more than your first year’s salary.  The amount listed above was just under what my starting salary as a first-year teacher would have been.

But I didn’t get hired.  I also didn’t substitute teach, which is the quickest path to becoming a teacher, outside of a weak job market (it wasn’t) and outright nepotism (I didn’t know anybody.)

Instead, I got a job as a secretary, which paid much less than that first-year teacher salary.  My Secretary I job brought in a paltry $9.10 an hour.  There is a lot to be said about why I made this decision, but that is not the focus of this essay.  The consequence of my decision was that I signed up for the 20-year graduated repayment plan instead of the 10-year one.  This means my expected payoff was scheduled for June 14, 2024.

In hindsight, when I switched jobs after a year an a half and got an $8000/year raise, I should have switched payment plans to the 10-year plan. But I did not. For many years, I trundled along paying just my monthly payment.  Only since I’ve begun my new job have I been making extra payments.

As mentioned before, I’ve been reading a lot of Mr. Money Mustache.  Yesterday, I encountered his post News Flash: Your Debt is an Emergency.  This was the second time I’ve read this post, as it is also part of Start Here: Getting Rich from Zero to Hero in one Post.  When I read the debt emergency post the first time, I nodded.  Yesterday, when I re-read it, plus the linked post about the guy who paid off $90,000 of student debt in 10 months, something clicked and I’ve been reborn.

I’m putting all hands on deck to get rid of this debt.

My current balance as of today stands at $13,441.22. My current budget allows for my regular scheduled payment of $189.37, plus an extra payment of $180.00. My goal is to scrape off wherever I can to add to that extra payment.

I’m not going to go to the extreme measures the $90,000/10 months guy did.  But I’m going to massively economize.

From now until this debt is paid off, I will report the following by the fifth of the month:

What I paid toward the loan the previous month
How much I paid toward the principal and how much toward the interest.*
Where the money for my extra payments came from.
A list of what I didn’t buy in order to put more money toward this project.**
Any roadblocks I’m having toward this goal.***

To get us started, here’s a quick Excel graph of my progress over 13 years.

*Here’s something I’ve already learned in the 25 minutes I’ve been doing this project:  my extra payments aren’t going to the principal only.  I will make it a priority to find out if I can change that.
**This is something the $90k/10mo guy did, and I like the idea.
***Right now one major road block I have is the number of friendships centered around socializing while purchasing food/drink.  More on that later.

Getting home from the Eclipse

And here’s where I should have kept to what I had planned. 

Instead of following the Oregon Bikeways path between Salem and Champoeg, we made the mistake of using Waze.  Waze kept wanting to put us on the freeway.  Unfortunately, every entrance to the freeway had very long backups.  We would wait for a while and then Waze would re-route us further south, to wait in another long line for the freeway.  We did this four times, never actually reaching the freeway, before I called, “Uncle,” we stopped at a truck stop to have a mediocre meal, and I took over the navigating.

This man was walking faster than cars were moving.

There was a lot of this:

I didn’t keep track of what time we left Salem, probably 1:15-1:30 pm. After the truck stop, I used Google Maps and chased the roads that were green.  It meant we went out of our way, but at least we were moving.  Once we got far enough north on back roads, we easily popped onto the interstate and had a quick trip home. But overall?  Probably five hours in the car.  It took us an hour to get there.

Still totally worth it.

Matt as the Oregon governors

After the eclipse, I stood in line to have the letters and postcards cancelled, and then we took a self-guided tour of the capitol.

Here’s Matt, sitting at the governor’s desk.

And now let’s see Matt as the governors.  As Theodore T. Greer:

As Julius Meier: (note that after that first picture, I neglected to take photos of the name plates, and there is not a convenient State Capitol Virtual Tour of all the portraits.  So I’m matching faces to Wikipedia entries, especially for the pre-1960’s governors.  Feel free to suggest corrections.)

As Oswald West:

As Vic Atiyeh:

As Ted Kulongoski:

As John Kitzhaber:

As Tom McCall:

As Barbara Roberts:

As Bob Straub:

And also as the dog:

I was quite taken by this very large mural of a good lookin’ shirtless guy.  Who was that guy?  Why did a shirtless worker make the cut for official statehouse murals? 

Our Total Eclipse, Salem, Oregon

Here’s what time we arrived in Salem.  We left at 3:30. There was traffic all the way, but not significant slowing.  Mostly my driving was in the 50 mph range.

In all my planning, I forgot to think about parking. Happily, we grabbed the last space in front of the State Library, paid for a full day of parking, and headed out to the capitol grounds.  There we set up our space. There was one other group on the lawn when we arrived–it turns out we were there before the park opened.  That was probably why all the other people were still hanging out at their cars.  Then we both fell asleep.

Time stamp: 5:52 am

Matt’s sleeping setup.

Here we are more awake.  6:27am.

I made breakfast pizza for our trip.  Breakfast pizza was AMAZING!  Thanks, Cooks Illustrated for creating such a delightful concoction of ingredients. My work-mate mentioned that there would be a special postage cancellation at the capitol, so soon after the 8 am capitol opening time, I went in search of it.  This is Helen, who not only works at the post office, but also designed the special cancellation.  I bought commemorative envelopes from the gift shop and a sheet of eclipse stamps, plus some postcards and headed back outside to do some on-site corresponding.  (Sadly, I took pictures of none of this, not the many postcards, or the special envelopes, or the special cancellation.)  You can do a Google Image search though, which is more fun, because you get to see cancellations from across the country.

Look at these amazing stamps!  They change color when you apply heat!

I also couldn’t resist the pressed penny machine.

Here we are in our glasses.  9:09 am.  The eclipse has begun! When you put on those glasses, everything went black, except the sun.  Hence the not-great framing.  Notice how many more people are around us.  They kept coming.

These two were among my favorite of our neighbors.  While most people, myself included, would put on the glasses and then take them off, look around, do other stuff (write letters, postcards) and then check back in with how the eclipse was going, these two put on their glasses and kept them on.

The stamps in the sun!

Our nearest eclipse neighbor to the left.  He had a lot of cameras going. There were a lot of cameras in general.  The fountain in the background came on early in the morning.  Overheard: “I work at the capitol, and that fountain is never on!” 

My favorite young viewer.

Improvising filters for the phone cameras.  10:03am.

And then it got colder and colder. I put my sweater back on.  And then it was dark. Total eclipse.  These are photos I took on my normal camera on the auto setting with no filter. I zoomed and pushed the shutter button. I’m thrilled they came out so well. 10:18 am.

The cold was surprising to me.  Also surprising was how it didn’t really get dark.  This is mid-eclipse.  It was more of a dusk, than of a midnight thing.

Back to the sun/moon thing.

What it looked like without zooming.

So many cameras!

I think this one is  my favorite.

Totality is over. Seeing the huge difference between 99% and 100%, I was very glad we made the journey.

Time stamp: 10:29 am.  I was very surprised how soon after totality people packed up and left.  There was still another hour of eclipse.  Ten minutes prior, this was full of people. My work colleague was among the early leavers.  It took her only two hours to get home.  This was a far shorter trip than we had.  

Some eclipse supplies.

Three sentence movie reviews: Logan Lucky

Heist movies, I like them. Channing Tatum, I’m a fan.  This was 118 minutes of fun for me.

Cost: $8.00 (big spender, due to CT)*
Where watched: St. John’s Twin Cinema with Matt, who also enjoyed.

*After coming back from vacation, I discovered I had free admission for two to this movie.  I had won a promo.  Alas, the movie had already been seen, and I was too busy to see it again.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2015/trainwreck_ver2.html
“How big is that car?” Asked someone from the IMP peanut gallery.  Fair question.

Here’s a trivia item from IMDB.

The film was distributed by cutting out studios, in order to have creative control and make money directly from the film itself. Accordingly, for this atypical distribution, Steven Soderbergh raised the budget by selling off foreign distribution rights, and then sold everything except the movie showing up in a movie theater in order to pay for advertising and prints of the movie (for example, selling post-theatrical rights to the likes of HBO, Netflix, Video-On-Demand, television, and airplanes). By following these two steps, Soderbergh was able to sidestep a Hollywood studio, and had creative control the entire time (for instance, the trailers that dropped earlier this summer were by his design, as was the poster and the entire marketing plan). Also, according to Soderbergh, under this set-up, the box-office bar for success is lower. With nearly everything prepaid, and no hefty distributor fees coming off the top, even a modest fifteen million dollar opening would be a win.

A comic and a confusing ad from the paper

There have been a lot of essays and musings this summer about the Mental Load women carry.  I think this comic nicely encompasses the scenario.  For me, the Mental Load is right up there on the list of reasons I will never have a wedding.  Also, it’s nice to have a term for something I feel acutely.

Also.  Justin Klump!  Did you send them the wrong photo?  It’s the most logical explanation for what’s going on here.  Why would your promo photo not show your whole face?

Essay: On being excited for once-in-a-lifetime expereinces

There’s a total solar eclipse happening soon, I don’t know if you’ve heard.

If you haven’t heard, I guarantee that you do not live anywhere near Portland, Oregon, because right now the eclipse has popped right to the top of general conversation topics, sometimes even outranking discussions of the weather, and the continually perplexing antics of the occupant of the White House.

I’ve backed away from these solar eclipse conversations because a lot of them go like this:

Someone:  So what are you doing for the eclipse?
Me:  I’m excited to go to Salem to watch it, ideally from the park in front of the State Capitol building.
Someone: When are you leaving?
Me: I am committed to getting up as early as I need to, in order to get myself to Salem.
Someone: That’s not going to work.

They don’t always say it straight out.  Sometimes it’s a series of follow up questions, each in a tone that says I’m an idiot for thinking my plan will work. Sometimes they lead with it, as in the phone conversation I had last night where the first thing caller said was, “You don’t think you’re actually going to drive to Salem, do you?”  Sometimes it’s a shake of the head and a doubtful lip purse as I outline my plans.

It’s frustrating.  It’s frustrating especially coming from people who know me, and who should know me well enough that “plans” means “detailed itinerary with many options, including multiple backup plans.”  Those same people who know me should also know that when I’m firmly committed to fun and excitement, that I will find it whether or not those plans will come to pass.

What really bugs me people’s inability to see anything but trouble in my excitement. This has lead to more than one frustrated rant on my part.

“When people tell me they are engaged, do I point out to them that statistically, their impending wedding is likely to be a costly endeavor that will end in divorce?” I said to a friend at lunch the other day.  “No, I do not, I congratulate them, because they are excited, and thus, I will be excited with them.”

I get that not everyone thinks experiencing a total eclipse is super cool. I get that not everyone is excited about the influx of people. I get that there might be terrible traffic, clouds, or any number of unknowns that might get in the way of my path to totality.  But when people tell me they don’t like crowds, do I tell them they should suck it up and wade into the crowds for this amazing experience? I do not, because I accept that they will not enjoy an experience with crowds.  I let them be them.  

They need to let me be me, which means not getting in the way of my excitement.

With that out of the way, here’s the plan:

Route option #1.  Portland to Salem via I-5
Route option #2. Portland to Salem following the same route we did when we rode the Oregon Scenic Bikeway.  It’s all back roads straight to the capitol.
Route option #3.  Portland to Salem via a different bike route to Salem, but this one on the west side.

Supplies:

The radio and internet are important supplies.  I will be monitoring the traffic conditions throughout the weekend.  If I’m hearing reports that absolutely no one is getting through to Salem or anywhere in the path of totality, not via any roads, not even those traveling through the night, well then, we will be experiencing the near-total eclipse from Kenton Park, and I will be happy to have the day off, and greatly enjoy 99% of the super cool experience.  

Note that I don’t count the internet as something that will be available during the navigation to the event, as it is possible that the grid will be at capacity and internet will not be something to be relied on.

Maps.  Big state map of Oregon. Pages of relevant maps of the area copied from maps at the library.

Water.  Several gallons, in case we end up spending the day with no access to water.

Food.  In case there is no food to be had.

Full tank of gas. I’m thinking it’s wisest to not count on getting gas anywhere in the path of totality

Books and games.  Things to do when we are waiting, either in standstill traffic, or at the capitol hanging out before or after the eclipse.

Blankets and pillows.  If we’re leaving at 3 am, 1 am, the day of, or 11 pm or 9 pm the night before,  I’m going to need to nap, and I want to be comfortable during that nap.

Toilet paper. Because you never know when you will need toilet paper.

Eclipse glasses.  No eclipse blindness for us.

Phone chargers.  Even if the grid is at capacity, we don’t want to inadvertently cut ourselves off of potential communication because our phones have died.

The most important thing I’m bringing:

A sense of adventure and a sense of fun.  Because even with all my plans, it might not work out.  I might experience the eclipse from the park seven blocks from my house, or from standstill traffic outside the path of totality.  We might run into all sorts of things not anticipated or thought of that mean that we don’t get the unique opportunity of totality.  But when people ask me, “What did you do for the eclipse?” or “Have you ever seen a total solar eclipse?” I’ll have a story to tell. And it won’t be one of how I got up like I do nearly every Monday and went to work, because the obstacles of getting to the unique experience 60 miles away were too high and it seemed like too much of a pain.