How 16 Real People Paid Off Their Student Loan Debt

I paid off $28,000 worth of student loans in 3 years, while earning around $30,000 a year.

The first year I worked on cutting my expenses as much as possible. I was only making $28,000 at the time and my rent was pretty pricey. I worked on sticking to a budget, finding coupons and freebies and putting any extra money toward my loans.

The second year I received a small raise, lowered my cost of living by moving to a new city, and I put any money I saved toward my loans. This way I was able to pay more than twice the minimum payment toward my student loans.

The third year, I moved in with my then-boyfriend and a mutual friend. By having roommates to split rent, utilities, internet and more with, I was able to put one of my paychecks every month toward my loans. By November 2014, I was debt free.

Learn more about Zina and her story at Conscious Coins.

I worked full-time all throughout my undergraduate and graduate degrees, and still managed to have student loans. I’m going to blame it on the fact that I had to move out when I was 17/18 and I had to pay for myself to live, but honestly, I wasted a lot of the money I made as well. I spent tons of money on clothes and food. 

The total amount of student loans that I accumulated was around $40,000 after I received both my undergraduate and graduate degrees.

I paid off my loans through a combination of cutting expenses and earning more money. I created a budget, wrote down everything I was spending each month, and cut where I could. But it still wasn’t enough to make a dent in my loans.

The month I paid off my loans I made $11,000 in extra income. Not everyone will start there, and I started with $0 extra per month, but I made building an extra income a huge part of my plan.

The point of all of the above is to help you pay off your student loans. However, you can always go a little bit further and pay off your student loans more quickly. The key to this is that you will need to pay more than the minimum each month for you to speed up your student loan repayment plan process.

If you want to learn more about Michelle’s story, find her at Making Sense of Cents.

When I decided in 2007 to attend the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, I knew I would need to finance the majority of my MBA with student loans. Here’s what I’ve learned since then that enabled me to pay off my loans in a little under six years.

To set the scene: I took out over $150K in loans, and when all was said and done, I paid over $180K, including interest, over 6 years. Back when I started school, the interest rates on my student loans ranged from about 6.5% (a subsidized loan that my school offered up to a limit) to 8.5% (the majority of my federal loans). I was lucky enough to not have student loan debt from undergrad, or any other installment debt like auto loans, so this was the only debt I was paying off. When I got the final “tab” after graduating, reality set in: I had a 6-figure bill that was accruing interest… It was time to get to work.

Here’s how I managed my student loan debt:

When I was leaving school, I was moving to a new city and a new apartment. One of the first things I had to do was understand my anticipated student loan monthly payments (after grace period) to make sure that my budget could withstand my rent, parking, daily expenses, and loan payment. I logged in to the two services that I made my student loan payments to and found how much I’d owe each month. Balancing student loans and living expenses in major cities like New York and San Francisco can be difficult, but there is no quicker way to paint yourself into a financial corner than to overextend yourself with your living expenses.

Right before my grace period ended, I idiot-proofed my payments. That is to say, I set up my student loan payments to automatically debit from my checking account so that I would never miss a payment. Being in debt was tough enough, so the last thing I wanted was to get hit with a fee or hurt my credit. It’s worth noting that many lenders, like CommonBond, will offer a 0.25% rate reduction by setting up autopay from your checking account.

For my first six months paying student loans, I paid the exact amount due while I got my bearings on my new job, city, income, and expenses. Once I confirmed that I was in a good place financially, I slightly increased my payments such that I was overpaying each month and therefore paying down my loan principal quicker. Even if the extra payment wasn’t a ton of money (ranging from $50 to $200 per month over the years), I thought these payments could add up to thousands of dollars over time (which they did).

I was not in an industry where bonuses were astronomical, but I did get some year-end bonuses in my first job and later received restricted stock at future companies. I put as much as humanly possible from these proceeds against my student loans. By prepaying chunks of my student loans 1 to 2 times per year, my outstanding debt really began to come down, and the light at the end of the tunnel began to peek through.

All of the above tactics got me to the point where I paid off my debt in a little under 6 years, or 4 years ahead of my 10-year term.

Lauren and I paid off $27,000 in just over 2 years. Our goal was to pay off our undergrad student loans by the time she finished her master’s degree.

Our plan was fairly simple:

1) we designated an amount to pay in addition to our minimum monthly payment ($200 in our case)

2) we committed our tax return & “extra pay checks” to our loan

3) I worked to generate additional income through freelance work on nights & weekends.

We tracked our progress on the loan through an amortized Excel spreadsheet and managed our budget with YNAB financial software (stands for You Need A Budget). The philosophy behind YNAB combined with the support of the YNAB online community (training, tutorials, forums) was a huge aspect of our success. Our encouragement to others is to make a plan and stick to it. It’s simple, but that’s really the secret.

I admit that I was slow to pay off my loans. It took me 10 years altogether to get debt free. But when I finally set my mind to it, I paid off $46,500 of student loan debt in 2 years and 3 months.

I did it by facing the facts, setting financial goals and a budget, boosting my income by taking on side jobs, and staying motivated.

I had $25,866.26 left in July 2014, and I made a goal to pay off this amount in 10 months. If you are looking at the numbers that’s $2,586 a month. And that doesn’t even calculate interest, so it was more like $2,600 per month.

The official day I paid off the last of my student loans was June 11th, 2015. I didn’t make the 10 month goal I set forth to complete, but it didn’t matter in the end. For a little over 2 years, I  made paying off my student loans the focus in my financial life. When I made that last payment I could not feel happier.

In January 2013, I set the goal of being debt free within 4 years. That was brazen because I still had $57,000 in student loan debt left. I was making $12 per hour and my contract was ending in a few months. How in the heck would I be debt free in four years? But something powerful happened when I set that intention. I set a goal — a BIG one — and even though I had no idea how I would actually reach that goal and even though it seemed so out of reach at the time, I made it happen. A year early.

Throughout the years, my blog has launched my freelance writing career as well as my event planning business. Because of it, I quit the job that I eventually found, and more than doubled my income, which helped me pay off my debt even faster.

I will also share that a small windfall helped me as well. I have never once thought or expected that I’d have a windfall of money. But earlier this year my mom received a sizable bonus at work — and decided to share a portion with me. It was $4,000, and along with a small amount from my emergency fund, I used it to pay off my last loan!

After all is said and done, I’ve probably paid close to $100,000 toward my student loan debt. I borrowed $81,000 and paid a lot in interest over the years. Sometimes I get sad, thinking how awesome it would be to have $100,000 in the bank, instead of having a net worth of basically zero. But I’m proud of what I’ve done. I’ve worked many long nights and shed a lot of tears to get here and it feels so damn good.

Learn more about Melanie’s story at Dear Debt.

When my wife and I were married in 2005, each of us came into the marriage with $15,000 of credit debt, and a combined $37,000 of student loan debt.

Since we were in $30,000 of credit debt, and since it has the higher interest rates (and not tax deductible), we had to make that debt the priority, and figured we’d never get out of our student loan debt. That was until 2008, when I decided to give my all to my business. I decided I was tired of being in debt and needed to earn more income so we could pay it off.

And that’s what I did. I hustled in my business. There was a few year period from 2009 to 2012 where I routinely would work late into the night, sometimes going to bed at 3 a.m. The point is, I was willing to do whatever it took to become more successful, and I started making a lot more money.

I’m happy to say that since that time, despite having 3 children and buying a house, we have now paid off all of our credit debt and have just $9,000 of student loan debt left. Yep, we paid off over $28,000 of student loan debt and $30,000 of credit card debt. I expect us to pay off the remainder of our debt in 2016.

The loan amount was $15,000. I don’t remember what the monthly payment was, as I paid it off during the grace period.

The two biggest things that helped me pay the student loan back were my parents’ support and having a second job.

I was able to live rent-free while I paid my loan off (although I did help with other bills), and my mother was kind enough to leave leftovers from supper when I came home. Just by staying with my parents, I saved $500-$600, and put that money towards the loan.

Managing two jobs wasn’t easy, and at times one compromised the other. I worked from 8 AM to 4 PM in a marketing job, and then worked from 5 PM to 10 or 11 PM as a hostess/busser at a restaurant. I would usually eat my supper in my car between jobs, or take a nap. It wasn’t unheard of for me to work 7 – 10 days in a row. Sometimes I would show up to my full time job sleepy from the previous night, or I would have to call in to the restaurant last-minute if my full-time job needed me to stay late for a project.

What kept me going was working with great people who supported my situation, and seeing my loan amount decrease over $1,000 a month. I was driven to pay it back as fast as possible, and the hard work paid off (no pun intended). I now live debt-free, which not many people can say at 24 years old these days.