Do You Have Debt Regret or Does Everything Happen for a Reason?
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When I see how much money DF and I owe, sometimes it is really easy to have regrets. Neither of us are using our advanced degrees, so when we make $1000+ payments every month, that fleeting thought goes through my head that it would be so nice if that money could go toward a house or a savings account or something that will give us more value now.
However, then I remind myself of something. DF and I met in law school. So, if we had both never gone, or if either one of us hadn’t, then we likely never would have crossed paths. So, although we aren’t using our degrees, our lives would be very different if we hadn’t gotten them. It is, of course, impossible to say whether they would be better or worse because there’s no way to know what would have happened if we’d taken different paths. But, since I’m pretty happy with my life right now (other than all this debt!) I can’t really say that I regret my decision entirely. Granted, $250K (the combined value of our loans) is about the most expensive dating service on the planet, but how can I regret doing the thing that brought us together.
This probably isn’t most peoples’ story. Debt comes from all sorts of different places, of course, it it is probably not very likely that many people met their spouse through acquiring credit card debt (unless of course you were charging drinks at the bar you met at or something indirect like that). But, maybe all the ‘foolish’ or even smart money decisions that people make that lead to their debt, happen for a reason. Perhaps overspending on credit cards causing you to delay buying that house for a year was part of some grand scheme of the Universe to help you find the perfect house, or the house where your child will meet and marry the girl next door, or some other cosmic destiny like that which we can’t hope to understand.
I’m not trying to justify getting into debt in any way, especially if it is debt that isn’t increasing in value (like mortgage debt). But, on some level, I do think the mistakes we make help to make us a part of who we are and help to shape our lives for a reason. So, although I hate writing those checks to the loan company every month, I don’t know whether I would go so far as to say that I regret the decisions I made.
