This screenshot (rather uninteresting as it is at first, second and third glance) represents a milestone in my life - I have now paid off my entire student loan. In fact, I seem to have paid off my entire student loan plus 15p. Maybe I'll get a cheque when it closes.

And honestly, I feel rather less jubilant about it than you might expect. That's probably because I was never really conscious of it while I was paying it off - it had just been something that had sapped quietly at my savings in the Bank of Scotland for many years and had been balanced out by a child bond maturing and a few generous yearly gift payments from my mother.

It started six years ago when I got a job in America for the first time - they track you down and send you a letter each year asking you what your salary is, and the amount you're earning determines the rate at which you pay it back. I'd been chipping away at it for a few years and then decided to just get it all over with and chose to ignore the last letter they sent me, which results in you being hit with the maximum repayment rate possible - finally I saw it dip into three figures, and elected to just pay off the remaining balance. So now I'm down to two fiscal responsibilities, the car loan (which seems to be flying past) and the mortgage (which, after taking interest into account, I think we've managed to pay off by about $17).

I also realized a couple of weeks ago that I had now passed the tenth anniversary of standing in the queue on the front steps of Andrew Melville Hall (a prestigious residence designed in the New Hideous style as an experiment by James Stirling while blindfolded) among a group of freshers waiting for them to open it so that it could devour us between its unsightly concrete mandibles. But even with that last monetary trace of university behind me... it still really doesn't feel like that long since I left. I always used to think that adults just knew what they were doing... I've been bluffing my way ever since.