Free at last

Free at last, free at last....  As of 1:30 pm MDT on March 17th, 2009 I am debt free!!  I just paid off the remaining balance on my car loan and can again live without debt.  That and I now have 100% ownership of my car.  

My whole life I've dreaded ever going into debt and worked hard to avoid it.  When I lost my scholarship (I blame Lauren :-P) at BYU I was afraid I'd have to take out a loan for the first time.  Luckily BYU is one of the cheapest Universities around and I got a great job in the Physics Department.  Somehow I always managed to break even with a little left over to feed my video game habits.  It didn't hurt that I rarely ate anything beyond dinner if I even ate dinner.  Oh, and it wouldn't have been possible without $1 Totino's pizzas, tuna, ramen noodles, and Marshmallow Maties, though not mixed together.

Then I graduated and was jobless.  Being jobless is usually not a good idea if you want to avoid debt.  My ex-wife draining a big chunk of my bank account wasn't all that helpful either.  Luckily I had good friends who helped me find an affordable place to stay during my "transition" period.  After a while I noticed what little money I had left was quickly running out.  I decided to seek employment and by "seek employment" I mean applying for the "sales" job some door to door recruiter offerred me.  I put "sales" in quotes because it was nothing more than cold calling people and lying to them about a product I was being lied to about.  After a month or so at that place I got fired; mostly because I refused to lie as much as the other sales people.  This marked the first time I've ever been fired or worked somewhere doing illegal business.

Now I had no idea what to do.  At least I was going to last a little longer or so I thought.  Turns out the company I worked for lied about their earnings, product, and ability to actually pay their employees.  So after they declared bankruptcy and no longer had to pay anyone I was back where I started except now I needed to get off the road to hell I was on because I was, in essence, stealing from people for a living.  Don't get me started on those door to door pest control, security systems, satelite TV, Melaluca, or other similar jobs students like to do.  Make tons of money at the price of your soul.  Sounds awesome, GO TEAM!!!

Bumming around the apartment one day I got a random phone call from someone who had my resume from a random application I sent in when I graduated.  Here was my big break.  Finally a real job after college.   Suprise!  It was phone support!  I won't go into detail about the horrors of that job.  Anyone who knows me probably has heard the story and I don't want to bite the hand that feeds as it were.  I am still with the company but in a much more relaxed and enjoyable position.  It all worked out in the end.  

So there you go.  A post that was just a "Hooray for me!" post has now turned into a life story post.  Now to move on to bigger and better things... like a house perhaps.