After working for a couple of years as an educator in South Carolina, I headed back to graduate school to pursue a master’s degree. I graduated from the University of Georgia with an M.S. in 2012, but I left with more than a diploma. I had more than $50,000 in student loan debt and a 25-year repayment plan.
Sound familiar to you? Unfortunately, that’s the norm for many graduates.
Even after landing a six-figure salary as a supply chain analyst and project manager at a Fortune 500 company, I still felt like I was living paycheck to paycheck after paying for rent, student loans, and the almond butter I felt I finally deserved. And I was making only minimum payments on the student loan debt (which still added up to about $500 a month).
So I accepted that I’d have my debt for the next 25 years, and that I’d introduce it to my husband and children someday.
I avoided dealing with any details about my financial situation and assumed I couldn’t make more than minimum payments because I always felt broke. But when I actually took a hard look at my spending, I was shocked at how much I spent on everything from eating at restaurants to buying clothes and even dog toys.
It was exhausting, and I didn’t want to continue living that way.
My debt-free fiancé told me that when we got married, he’d use his savings to pay off my loans. There was no way I wanted him to use his savings to pay my debt, and it lit a fire under me to pay off as much as I could as soon as possible. My corporate job was another major catalyst to get moving — I wanted out, but I needed to pay off my debt before quitting a high-paying job.
So in December 2014, I made a decision to pay off my debt aggressively — seriously aggressively. I had more than $48,000 left to pay off spread across six loans, all with interest rates between 6.8 and 7.1 percent.
As unbelievable as it may sound, I ended up taking my debt from a 25-year repayment plan to a one-year timeline. It required some major sacrifices in the short-term: I got a roommate, switched cell phone providers, cut all travel, reduced eating out to about once a month, pressed pause on my 401(k) investments, and skimped on the almond butter at the grocery store. This saved me around $2,000 per month, not including the $3,500 I made selling furniture and electronics.
But I realized that I could only cut my expenses so much. Increasing my income would be a critical part of gaining freedom from debt. So as a side gig, I took a skill set that I was using in my corporate role — streamlining projects to save money and time, and get better results — and used it to show entrepreneurs how to run their businesses more efficiently. The business didn’t require much overhead, and I knew I wanted to explore this venture once I left my day job. Getting started on the side first meant I could grow the business while I had a steady income, ideally setting me up with a thriving business once I could finally quit the corporate world.