Hey everyone! Today I have a guest post to mark off the second week in my debt payoff series. I asked readers and friends to submit guest posts regarding anything relating to their debt. Enjoy! If you would like to participate, please e-mail me at senseofcents@gmail.com. Today’s post is about a reader’s student loans. Read further if you would like to read about my wonderful $38,000 student loan plan.
Almost eleven years ago I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree in Business Management and $15K in debt.
I was lucky to only have this much in loans as my parents for some and I had paid cash for two years myself by working summers in high school.
My husband had an additional $12K that he owed and when we married two years later we combined it.
Over the course of 6 years we made it a priority to pay these off. Every year when we got our tax money back we paid down on these loans. We started with the biggest one first (mine) and then used the money we saved on not having to pay mine and doubled down on paying his.
Graduate School
I then went to grad school and had to take out another $5K in loans. For most of grad school I took one class at a time and we paid for those cash (about $900 each.) That was the most helpful as we could stay on top of it and not have to borrow too much (though it took me 5 years to graduate!).
One year I had to take a lot of classes (I was pregnant and trying to get ahead) and we took out loans to cover it. Again, we used tax money to pay it back and within 10 years we had successfully paid off approx. $32K in student loans.
Some facts about how we deal with money in our house:
– We don’t have any credit cards. Everything we do is paid with debit and if we can’t pay for it we don’t do it.
– Since having our two children our tax returns are ridiculous (over 10K!) We use that money to pay off debts (both cars, wood floors, college accounts for children, vacation funds, etc.) Before the fun stuff is paid for we pay of the boring things, like college loans. It is not exciting to do this, but it feels really good to eliminate debt.
– We automatically pull money into savings and our retirement accounts. It is important to us to have a buffer in savings for emergencies.
– We live off of one income (my husband’s) while I stay at home. I worked until our children were born and used that paycheck to add into our savings.
– The only debt we have is our house, which we bought as investment property and will rent out for income when we move in June (we are a military family!)
A little about me! I have a personal style/lifestyle blog called Because of Jackie. I’m a mama of two young ‘uns, and I love to shop (cheaply!), read, write, watch QVC (I’m addicted!) and share my stories of everyday life. Curious? You can read more here.
Do you have student loans? What are you doing to eliminate them?
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