Many moons ago, I went to university. A few dozen moons later, I went to
college. While these were both great experiences, from which I’ve culled many
fond memories and one or two stray nuggets of knowledge that weren’t blown out
by parties and socializing, I also ended up saddled with student loans.

Major student loans. When I first started paying them off (lo, with much
gnashing of teeth and weeping in despair), they were monthly installments of 624
dollars.

In some countries, this is a decent annual salary. In some places, that’s an
appropriate amount to spend on a nice meal.

Where I live, it’s a mortgage payment. Maybe two.

It took me years to look at these payments without resentment. Aw hells, who
am I kidding? I still resent them. Not the education or the loan, though. I have
no problem with paying it off - I borrowed it, I’ll return it. But frankly, the
system for payback with federal and provincial loans is so rigid, it’s obviously
not really looking at the end user. It doesn’t care about the end user. It’s not
interested in how cozy you can make your cardboard shelter of a home with your
remaining income. So long as you pay back what you borrowed within nine years,
you may eventually aspire to a corrugated metal shelter.

It took me years to look my loans in a more pragmatic light -  as a mortgage
in and of itself. A mortgage on my future. Me, banking on me. Telling the world
that yes, eventually I will stop being a sloppily dressed student who minors in
card playing at the university cafeteria (fondly called the pit). Eventually, I
would become a tax-paying drone at a large company. Solid. Dependable.
Middle-aged.

Anyway, the point of this post is simple. Through some rather interesting
(and prudent, I might add) financial adjustments, my student loan will
effectively be paid off. Yes, it’s more of a consolidation than a full pay-off,
but still. As of the end of this month, I will no longer be paying a line item
by the name of Student Loans.

As part of my couples therapy with my student loan (yes, we were a couple.
Inseperable. Mutually dependent), I promised myself that after it was all done,
I’d give myself 624 dollars to spend. Frivolously. Freely. Without remorse. As a
symbol of my freedom from this monthly installment.

A signal that my mortgage on my future was done.

So now it has come to pass. I am going to reward myself with this money (even
though Buddy is looking at me somewhat askance, and may roll his eyes repeatedly
during this process).

I have about eleventy-billion different ideas for how to spend it, but I want
to add more. So I put it out there, for the intarweb.

What would you do with this Symbolic Monetary Justification for Spending?