Student Loans Paid Off
Rummaging through old papers I found this bit of scrawl on the back of a money.com business card, from when I was Director of Technology. I remember this day, on which I once and for all paid off the student loans that had hung over my head for about a decade. I know now relatively lucky I was, since I got loans at a time when you could only get so much money. I think the limit was around $12,000. College students after me would see triple-digit debt that might follow them for the rest of their lives. But that did not matter to me in this day in 2009, just one day before my 19-year anniversary of moving to New York on October 20, 1990.
I had also finished paying off my credit card maybe a week earlier, so when the student loans disappeared I got my first taste of what I came to consider the truest form of wealth: Having no debt. I have not owed anybody so much as a dollar since that day, though there were times when for whatever reason I carried a bar tab over from one night to the next, or had to borrow some small amount of money on account of having forgotten to bring cash of my own. Even those minor incidents of owing anybody anything made me feel a heaviness in my life.
I hate to use Donald Trump as an example for anything, but over the years he has made some comments that stuck with me. I don’t recall the source but during one of his bankruptcies he reached a point where his net worth was in a negative 9-figure range. While exiting the Trump Tower with a business associate he allegedly pointed out a homeless person lying on the sidewalk outside the building and said he envied that guy. This is not the exact quote but he said something like “That guy’s lucky. At least he has nothing. I have less than nothing.” It was interesting to think about having nothing as being any kind of goal for anybody. He, of course, maintained his privileged lifestyle while his debts were negotiated away. It is not a particularly sensitive remark but it was one I think of in reference to paying off my own debts and feeling like the richest person in town.
By the time I paid off those student loans I could have cut ties with corporate. That was my original long-term plan, to make enough from corporate to pay off those loans and resume my career as a pianist. It did not work like that, and I have no second thoughts about essentially abandoning the concert platform. I stuck around corporate a little longer, finally getting whacked at the end of 2001. My firing was blamed on how AOL’s purchase of Time-Warner swallowed so much cash they just couldn’t keep me around. The boss who broke the news to me would later say in his exit interview that letting me go was the worst day of his career at Time-Warner. I heard that from a reliable source, but I consider myself slightly skeptical those were his exact words.
I don’t think about those days much anymore, because they don’t matter. I mean I take note of news about the company and anyone I might possibly know still working there, but that’s about it. Through Facebook I see passing comments of former colleagues, with occasional interactions and serendipitous real-world encounters.
Here is the flip side of that business card, a piece of stiff paper that feels like it comes from a lifetime ago.
Money.Com Business Card
