this wasn't in the plan |but life is still pretty good

Much thanks to Emily at Remodeling This Life for providing me with so much blog material lately. She tagged me for the best financial move in college meme. All in all, I'd say The Tall One and I did quite well (we were married between our sophomore and junior years). There are a few things that I'd change if I could, but mainly because hindsight is 20/20 and I know how things turned out. But what do I think was our best move? That would be taking out some student loans

We received a nice amount of grants for our senior year, enough to pay for tuition and then some. And of course we were offered loans (because they always offer you loans). Since we could survive without the money we tossed around the idea of taking the loans and then throwing them into a one year CD. The loans were subsidized so we did not have to pay any of the interest that accrued while we were in school. By putting the money in a CD, we could earn some interest on it and then the money would be there for us to pay back after graduation or keep should we decide we needed it for something. So we did. And, since we graduated during a fabulous year for low student loan rates (we consolidated at less than %1) and a not so fabulous year for jobs, we decided to not immediately pay back the loan. And I'm very glad that we did. Five months after graduation, I got pregnant and then two months later, TTO decided he wanted to go back to school (in a completely unrelated field). The school he attended was tuition free, but did not provide any types of financial aid. The loans we took out while we were undergrads allowed me to stay at home with Bug while TTO went back to school full-time.

And now they are mostly paid back. And I know they are a sign of me being able to spend the first two years of my son's life at home with him, so I don't hate them too much.

I think that two factors played in our favor here. First off, we took out a modest amount, we didn't take all that was available to us and we understood the type of loans we were offered. Second, upon graduation we researched consolidation and knew that we were getting a great interest rate and that there was no way we'd be able to borrow money for that cheap from anyone else.

So yes, I think our best move in college was taking out those loans. It's one thing I wouldn't change if I could.