Excerpt:
The day I paid off my undergraduate student loans felt like a momentous inflection point.
I had just sold my first apartment, which I'd bought in Dupont Circle in 2000 on pretty much the lowest possible income you could make and buy a place in Washington, D.C., in what turned out to be the waning days of the era when you could afford to buy tiny apartments in Dupont Circle on such salaries. Three years of piecemeal renovations later, I sold it for enough that that I was able to turn around after settlement and write the largest check I've ever written, then or since, to the U.S. Department of Education, for the full amount I owed.
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