Goal #89 Graduate debt free from grad school

I actually did not accomplish this goal, but I did a dang good job, so I'm going to blog about it and donate a dollar to charity anyway.

I decided to go to grad school in January and started in August, so I didn't have much time to save. I expected to get more scholarships in grad school than I did. I had full-tuition scholarships that last half of my undergrad! But in my program the scholarships were need-based and went more to people with families than to single people like me. I worked as much as I could handle during grad school, which helped, but wasn't enough. My parents struck a deal with me that I'd pay for everything myself until I was broke; then they'd help me out. So it happened that way. I made it through 1.5 years of grad school all on my own, but Winter and Spring 2015 I was bone dry broke, and my parents wrote me checks. It was half a gift and half a loan, which I'm going to pay back in 2016. (new goal!)

Man, is it humbling not to be able to provide for yourself! I never want to be in that position again! However, I learned a lot. I learned to patch my jeans instead of buy new ones. I learned to say "I can't" when my friends want to go out to eat. I learned which healthy meals are cheaper than others. And most importantly, I learned how to budget.

I started budgeting early on, when I accomplished this goal the summer before grad school. Back then I used a 3x5 card to physically write down all my expenses and an actual calculator to subtract them from my budget! Ew! Now I use a WAY better system. 

Why yes, this IS my current budget--see? I still use it!

YNAB (You Need A Budget) does math automatically for me, sorts data into nifty graphs, and is on my phone so that I can record purchases immediately. I LOVE it. I'm a total budget convert. It makes me feel empowered.

This goal got me thinking, though, what is the value of a master's degree? So, if you don't mind, I'm going to muse on that for a minute before I donate a dollar to charity.

• Monetarily speaking, my earning power is twice as much as it was before my degree. It also expands my job possibilities from 1 to 4 types of jobs
• My intellectual curiosity was stoked. I LOVE that. I love being intrigued. I love having my mind blown.
• I got to learn from brilliant people. My professors are all masters of their fields. I got to go to academic conferences and meet the people who wrote my textbooks. It was awesome!
• I got to be surrounded by curious, kind, philanthropic, creative people who are accomplishing amazing things. Seriously--rubbing shoulders with the other students in my program was a gift. And I get to have these connections for the rest of my life.
• I proved to myself that I can learn hard things. My sense of self-efficacy is WAY higher. I feel like I can troubleshoot and figure out hard things and teach myself anything.
• I got to get my name out academically. Academia wasn't my focus (but it might be if I decide to be a professor), but I still got my name on some papers. It still tickles me when I get an e-mail from academia.edu that says "Someone searched for you on Google and found your Academia page." (check me out!)

My dollar for completing this goal goes to funding young innovators in Sierra Leone, Kenya, and South Africa.