Canada, Law Schools, Money, Student Loans

Dreams Do Come True: You Can Pay Off Your Student Debts In Cash

Paying off your debt all at once, in cash, and living the dream...

By  
on

There’s a Canadian out there living the dream. He graduated from law school at the University of Toronto in 2009, during the heat of the recession.

But now, just three years later, he’s completely debt-free. A little while ago, he made his last debt payment of over $100,000, in cash.

Of course, he didn’t make that kind of money being a lawyer. There aren’t a lot of people who graduated in 2009 from law school who were able to pay off their debts through their work in law.

But I still consider Alex Kenjeev my hero. Slow rolls his debts, makes a bunch on money, then dumps bags of cash on the bank to leave him alone.

It could still happen….

Business Insider ran the story of a guy who at first posted his receipt on Reddit:

Sponsored

Last week, a Reddit user posted a photo of a $114,000 student loan bill — paid in cash — that elicited thousands of comments and dozens more when we posted it here.

Since then, the anonymous alum has stepped forward as Alex Kenjeev, a 2009 law school graduate of the University of Toronto.

Kenjeev, who works for venture capitalist firm O’Leary Ventures, told Business Insider the $114,000 payment was the last chunk left of $190,000 in loans he took out during school.

My God, that’s so awesome. If I could ever pay back my loans in one sitting, this is how I’d do it. In fact, this is how I thought it would happen. I figured I’d have to play a little dodgeball with my creditors for a couple of years, but then I’d hit it big and earn enough money to make my outstanding debt seem trivial. I’d walk into a bank one day and drop a hundred and fifty thousand dollars on somebody, and bam, I’d be done.

Don’t act like I’m the only one. There are so many people who are in law school racking up six figures of debt thinking that they’re going to make enough money to pay it off quickly. Even if you tell them, “You’re taking out $100,000 for a job where you’ll make $55,000 if you are lucky,” those debtors will think, “Well, it’s just $55K to start. I’ll be making enough money to pay this baby off in a few years.” That’s how people think, that’s how Republicans win elections, that’s how the world works — everybody thinks that riches lie waiting for them right around the corner, just out of sight.

But I don’t begrudge the one guy it did work that way for. In fact, I admire him:

He’d spent years dragging out his payments while pouring most of his income into a start-up. As for why he paid in cash, Kenjeev said he wasn’t proving some point about the dangers of credit cards or trying to show off. He just thought it’d be really funny.

“It was stressful enough to carry such a big debt load. I thought it would be worth getting a few laughs out of it,” he said. “Neither bank thought it was as funny as I thought it was.”

Sponsored

Ah, that’s where I made the wrong turn at Albuquerque. I dragged out my payments to buy liquor and pay rent in the 2-1-2. This guy invested his money. I gotta learn to do that.

He paid in large bills, but the Editor of Blawg Review tells me that the $1 currency in Canada are coins called “Loonies.” I would so love to walk into my bank debt collection agency with a truckload of Susan B. Anthonys. “You think it’s annoying to count all these coins? Well, not nearly as annoying as not being able to answer my phone from an unlisted number for eight years.”

I can still dream.

Here’s What Happened When This Guy Tried To Pay A $114,000 Student Loan In Cash [Business Insider]

Earlier: Debt: The Silent Killer
Student Loan Debt: What’s the Worst That Could Happen?
Kids, Get High Off Drugs, Not Debt

Topics

, , , , , , , , ,