I’m a nice girl (most of the time) and my mother taught me to play nice with others and hold my tongue when I have nothing nice to say. But it’s hard to talk when you’re holding your tongue and sometimes my inner mean girl is just dying to bust out.
This often gets me in trouble. Other times it’s incredibly helpful. I’ll save you the details of the former, but I can tell you that the later helped me pay off $30,000 in student loan debt.
Because I paid off my loans and lived to tell the story, when I hear people saying that they’re in over their heads and debt and want to give up, I want to scream at them. Not in a nasty way, in a “I’m going to shake up your world a little bit and make you think about what you’re saying, because you’re too smart to let that interest eat up your future savings (that was a mouthful).” kind of way.
My Student Loan Mess
I guess I get frustrated seeing other people feeling so bad, because I used to be in their shoes. I used to feel the same way… like debt was unavoidable, so I may as well just pay the minimum payments and learn to live with it. Fortunately I didn’t just “learn to live with debt.”
I got mad really freaking pissed at my student loan debt and I decided I wasn’t going to let it take a free ride on my back for the next 10 years of my life. Paying back the debt one small payment at a time just wasn’t something I was willing to do…
No, I wanted to kill my debt. Get out the ax, chop it into little bits and bury in my backyard (I don’t have a backyard and I don’t have an ax for anyone who was just assessing my stability).
Fortunately, my other “homicidal debt plan” involved working harder, budgeting more and picking up extra side gigs. Much less violent, but just as effective.
The Turning Point
I believe that each of us has a turning point when we make the decision that we no longer want to live with debt. You know, that moment when you’re so “sick and tired” of being “sick and tired” that you take control of you debt and get on the path to debt freedom.
For me, that moment came when I learned that I’d be in debt for 10 years and would pay back over $11,000 in interest over the life of my loan. I knew that I wanted to reach certain goals including buying a home, having a family and starting my own business and I knew that those goals would turn into more complicated decisions if I had $30k hanging over my head.
So I got aggressive with my debt. I started pushing it around a little bit and told it not to get comfortable living at my guest room. I told vacations, clothing and fine dining to stop courting me and I focused solely on paying off my debt for a couple years.
When I wasn’t kickboxing my debt into a corner I was working extra jobs, planning my meals and clipping coupons. I made a budget and I stuck to it. And in the end the “pay off” was enormous. Emotionally, spiritually and financially I finally felt free. A feeling that was priceless and well worth the temporary sacrifice.
Are You Fighting Debt? What Made You Mad Enough to Fight?
Images: Markhillary and Naval History & Heritage Command