The author graduated from college without any student loan debt.
Courtesy of Kris Ann Valdez
When I was 14, I overheard my parents say they would not be paying for their kids to attend a four-year university.If any of us wanted the traditional college experience, we'd have to figure out how to pay for it ourselves. Community college was always an option, and they'd let us live at home while going to school.As the oldest kid, I remember feeling stunned at first. For many of my friends, college was treated like an automatic next step that parents somehow financed. But after the disappointment wore off, it lit a fire in me. I threw myself into academics, determined to earn scholarships large enough to make my four-year university dreams possible.I finished high school with a full-ride academic scholarship to any in-state university. But since my scholarship didn't include housing, I chose the least glamorous option by attending the school closest to home. I commuted to class, nannied, overloaded credits every semester, including summers, and gratefully accepted the $2,000 a year my parents offered toward expenses.Mostly living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and praying my debit card had enough money to fill up my gas tank, I graduated debt-free in three years. My younger siblings each found their own version of the "scrappy" route, too. My sister started community college classes at 15. My brother launched a business as a teenager.Watching other people's choices changed how I viewed college debtThen I married someone with student loans.Compared to many other borrowers, my husband's debt load was actually modest, around $20,000, but in our early years of marriage, even that felt overwhelming. Every time we deferred the loans, the interest just kept on accruing. So we took on side hustles to pay them off faster, working weddings and bar mitzvahs and proctoring ACT tests on weekends.
