In July of 2013, I finished paying off my student loans.
It was a fantastic feeling and something I still think about to this day. Even though I have a success story when it comes to paying off student loans, I know that many others struggle with their student loan debt every single day.
The average graduate of 2015 walked away with more than $35,000 in student loan debt, and not only is that number growing, the percentage of students expected to use students loans is on the rise. Plus, if you have a law or medical degree, your student loan debt may be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
This is a ton of money and can be quite stressful.
After earning three college degrees, I had approximately $40,000 in student loan debt.
To some, that may sound like a crazy amount of money, and to others it may seem low. For me, it was too much.
At first, paying off student loans seemed like an impossible task, but it was an amount I didn’t want to live with for years or even decades. Due to that, I made a plan to pay them off as quickly as I could.
And, I succeeded.
I was able to pay off my student loans after just 7 months, and it was all due to my blog.
Yes, it was all because of my blog!
Without my blog, there is a chance I could still have student loans. My blog gave me a huge amount of motivation, allowed me to earn a side income in a fun way, and it allowed me to pay off my student loans very quickly.
I’m not saying you need to start a blog to help pay off your student loans, but you might want to look into starting a side hustle of some sort. Blogging is what worked for me, and it may work for you too.
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I believe that earning extra income can completely change your life for the better. You can stop living paycheck to paycheck, you can pay off your debt, reach your dreams, and more, all by earning extra money.
This blog changed my life in many other ways, besides just allowing me to pay off my student loans. It allowed me to quit a job I absolutely dreaded, start my own business, and now I earn over $50,000 a month through it.
If you are interested in starting a blog, I created a tutorial that will help you start a blog of your own for cheap, starting at only $2.95 per month (this low price is only through my link) for blog hosting. In addition to the low pricing, you will receive a free blog domain (a $15 value) through my Bluehost link when you purchase at least 12 months of blog hosting. FYI, you will want to be self-hosted if you want to learn how to make money with a blog.
Below is how blogging helped me pay off my student loans.
Quick background on my student loans.
In 2010 I graduated with two undergraduate degrees, took a short break from college, found a job as an analyst, and in 2012 I received my Finance MBA. Even though I worked full-time through all three of my degrees, I still took out student loans and put hardly anything towards my growing student loan debt.
Instead, I spent my money on food, clothing, a house that cost more than I probably should have been spending, and more. I wasn’t the best with money when I was younger, which led to me racking up student loan debt.
After receiving my undergraduate and graduate degrees, the total amount of student loans I accumulated was around $40,000.
Shortly after graduating with my MBA I created an action plan for eliminating my student loans, and in 7 months was able to pay them all off. It wasn’t easy, but it was well worth it.
The biggest reason for why I was able to pay off my student loans is because I earned as much money as I could outside of my day job. I mystery shopped and got paid to take surveys, but the biggest thing I did was I made an income through my blog.
I worked my butt off on my blog.
Any extra time I had would go towards growing my blog. I woke up early in the mornings, stayed up late at night, used lunch breaks at my day job, and I even used my vacation days to focus on my blog.
It was a huge commitment, but blogging is a lot of fun and the income was definitely worth it.
While I was working on paying off student loans, I earned anywhere from $5,000 to $11,000 monthly from my blog, and that was in addition to the income I was earning from my day job.
This helped me tremendously in being able to pay off my student loans, especially in such a short amount of time.
My blog allowed me to have a lot of fun.
One reason why I was able to work so much between my day job and my side hustling is that I made sure my side hustles were fun. Because I didn’t like my day job, I knew I just didn’t have it in me to work extra on something everyday if I didn’t enjoy it.
That’s where blogging came in.
Blogging is a ton of fun, and I have made many great friends. At times it can be challenging (the good type of challenging!) but also a lot of fun. I love when I receive an email from a reader about how I helped them pay off debt, gave them motivation, taught them about a certain side hustle, and more. Helping others along the way is another part of what really makes it worthwhile.
The fun I had blogging made it feel like a hobby, and that’s why I was able to put a crazy number of hours into it.
I focused on growing and improving my blog.
I knew I had to keep earning a good income online in order to pay off my student loan debt, so I made sure that I spent time growing and improving my blog as well. Since I love blogging so much, this was a fun task for me.
Improving my blog included learning about social media, growing my website, knowing what my readers want, producing high-quality content, keeping up with changes in the blogging world (things change a lot!), and more.
I put nearly every cent from side hustling towards paying off student loans.
One thing I did with the extra income I earned each month was putting as much of it as I could towards paying off student loans, and this way I wasn’t tempted to spend the income on something else.
So, as I earned money from my blog, I put it towards paying off student loans as quickly as I could.
This is probably easier said than done, though.
When you start earning a side income it can be very tempting to buy yourself some things. After all, you are tired, you have been working a lot, and therefore you may justify purchases to yourself.
But before you know it, you may have just a fraction of what you’ve earned left and able to put towards paying off your student loans.
It’s better to think about WHY you are side hustling and put a majority of the income you earn towards that instead.
I stayed positive when paying off student loans.
It was hard to manage everything. I was working around 100 hours each week between my day job and my side jobs, which left little time for sleep or seeing loved ones.
Luckily, I love blogging and that made it much easier to spend so much time on my blog. Watching my student loans get paid off and the debt going down was a huge motivator.
At first I thought it was impossible, and now I know it wasn’t!
Paying off my student loan debt has been one of the best choices I have ever made.
Do you have student loan debt? How are you paying off student loans?
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