When I told a friend what I was doing, she thought I was crazy. "It's not your debt," she told me. But when you're married, it is your debt. And as a couple, it's important to tackle it as a team and remove any negative emotions that could cloud your judgment and ultimately sabotage your end goal.
People may say paying off someone else's debt is enabling them. But I didn't see it this way. Student loans are different from other debt. Don't get me wrong — debt is debt. But his student loans were a one-time debt and have proven to be a solid investment. By paying down his loans, I was building our net worth as a couple.
I realize that what I did won't work for everyone. When paying off a spouse's debt, you can't view this as a "loan" or expect to be paid back at some point. You're willingly giving this money to help them with no resentment. If you can't get past this, you shouldn't pay off their debt.
It's been a little over a year since we paid off the full balance. In total over two years, I paid $22,680 and my husband paid nearly $12,000, making the total cost of his undergraduate loans nearly $65,000. Every so often I still log into his account just to see, "Your balance is currently $0." The joy I feel when I see this is insurmountable. My decision to pay off a portion of his loans was entirely psychological, not financial. It's a greater high than anything I could get from the stock market.
Mary Wheeler is a freelance writer based outside Boston, MA, and a program manager at MIT Sloan School of Management. Her work has appeared in Metro US, Men's Journal, and several regional publications.