3/26/14
Even though we knew it wasn't good to have debt, we didn't really feel it was all bad either. It just seemed like a necessary evil. However, we are both naturally frugal and so didn't spend a lot of money on other things and always tried to live within our means in other areas of our life.
Phil felt that he needed to go to graduate school to progress his career, and I supported him. He was working at a local company as a buyer while I finished my degree. Once I graduated he planned to start a masters program. He decided that an MBA would be best and so started preparing to take the GMAT. This is where some of our sense of frugality was misplaced. We didn't want to fork out the money to pay for Phil to take a real GMAT prep class (it was around $500 if I am remembering right) so we paid something like $90 for him to take an online prep class which ended up being pretty useless. At the time we just thought we were saving money (ironic isn't it?), but we realize now that spending the money on a real class probably would have paid off in the end.
Phil is smart and has always done well in school, but isn't a great test taker (on standardized tests, that is). He took the GMAT several times and never got a great score, which really limited his options on where he could go to grad school. However, he had international experience and spoke Chinese which opened the door to Thunderbird School of Global Management, a private college in Arizona. Thunderbird was ranked #1 in International Business, and all we read about it convinced us that it would offer Phil some good opportunities to get a better job. The only downfall? Tuition and fees would total around $100,000.
We should have seen that number and turned and ran the other way. Was an MBA really worth that much? Was it really the only way to get a better job? No. Of course not. But for some reason we didn't feel the weight of having that kind of debt hanging over our heads. Its not that we didn't talk about it. We did. But ultimately we decided it was ok. We agreed we would pay it off as quickly as we could and it would be ok. We convinced ourselves that it was our only option.
Looking back now, we did have other options. Phil could have continued to work for one more year and taken a real GMAT prep course to try and better his score and increase his options. Had we stayed in Salt Lake I also would have had some better job opportunities (one that I really wanted but turned down because we were moving to AZ) and could have worked full-time and saved all of that money. Even if Phil hadn't been able to improve his GMAT score, he probably could have done an executive MBA program at the University of Utah at night and continued to work full-time. We could have cash-flowed his entire program, paid off the loans we already had, and been debt free.
Hindsight is 20/20. We made our choices and chose to come to Thunderbird and take on the debt. That is done. There is no point in dwelling on the past. But, I hope that others might learn from our mistakes. The truth is, it was easier to just get loans than to do a little work. We wanted instant gratification. Phil was tired of his job. I was ready for a new adventure. We didn't want to have to wait until he improved his score, or we had saved more money. We didn't want to stay in our same tiny apartment, or be stuck in a job that wasn't very fun.
But that is the problem with society today. We all want things right NOW. And we can get them...if we borrow the money. But, like others, we have learned the hard way that sometimes (maybe all the time) its worth it to wait. Its worth it to work. Its worth it to not have debt.
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