How I paid off $70k in debt (Less than one year after I graduated)

Hey everyone, thanks for stopping by for a tough post. Debt is always hard to talk about so if you’re reading for fun, thank you! If you’re reading for support, we’re here for you.

My story begins when I decided an American education would be better than my native home country of Canada. I planned it out, looked into many factors, and decided the US was a better place for my future than Canada. But Canada has subsidized education and it came as a little let down to tell my family I’d rather attend college in the US where education was almost triple the amount. I decided to attend the University of Washington and that cost me $12k a year and I went there for roughly 2.5 years to finish up my undergraduate degree. $12k x 2.5 = $30k. I then decided a graduate program was the best option and I went to grad school and this cost me $33k. $30k + $33k = $63k. I round up on the remainder and that’s because I went to community college before the bachelors degree, it took me 2.5 years to get through ~ each quarter depended on the number of credits you were taking and it varied for me. In my experience I saw that community college cost me ~ $6k, looking at it now I doubt that it did, in fact I think it cost me more because $1k was about the cost of 4 classes a quarter. But for the sake of this story, you can see where the majority of my $70,000 debt came from.

I am thankful because I did not have additional credit card, house, or vehicle debt. I also survived the first few years of community college by living with my dad. That helped a lot! But for the most part, I paid down my debt in small amounts and here is how I did it:

Debt was my number one priority. I have heard it many many times and its hard, I completely understand. But if debt is what you want to get rid of so badly then it has to become number one priority in your life. That means that you will start to think a different way about anything and everything that will cost you even a cent. Under the pressure of all my loans I changed little things that in the end contributed to larger things. My habits changed, I walked/ran more often, I did things that cost very little or were free, I even changed my coffee order because it was cheaper that way. I did not go out for drinks, I did not go out to eat, I did not buy the latest makeup/fashion/thing because I had debt to pay. Debt was always on my mind and if there was any way I could contribute one more cent to it, I would do it.
I got a job to help contribute to my debt. This is important. In my mind it made more sense to have a job while I went to school and tried to pay down all the debt I had. I didn’t like seeing the 7% interest accrue on my loans over months and rack up even more money I had to pay off. Instead I got a job and whenever I got paid I would make sure I paid some of my debt off. If anything, I tried to pay more than $100 but that just depended on what I could afford. At times I paid off $15 here and $15 there when I had it. But this being the first action I did when I got paid, put the habit in my mind to always be aware of and always pay down what I owe first before doing anything else. Instead of getting a pay cheque and spending it all right away, I was able to learn to save it and put it towards my loans first and then use what was left to live on.
I found things to do that were free (or close to free). I hiked, a lot. I went outside, a lot. I went to lakes, went on runs, trained for and ran half marathons, went to parks etc. I did things outside because it was free and I didn’t have to pay for them. At the time I had the option to live at home (I only did this during community college though) and I had free rent. This isn’t something everyone can do but if you can, do it. If you are a student in Seattle, you can ride the bus for free with your student card, do it! I know cars are cool but every little bit counts right? If you work in an office with coffee, drink the coffee and nix the Starbucks drink. It’s these small things that add up! I am a huge fan of being outside so I’d recommend finding things to do outdoors. It’s usually free! Or you can Google “things to do that are free” and events usually pop up in your city, there are also many lists of free things to try.
Say no to social drinks/dinners. This one is big. Being social and being with friends is great and who said it always has to be done around drinks and some dinner? It doesn’t. Instead of dinners I’d let friends know I want to get coffee instead. And it does feel weird at first, saying coffee instead of dinner is just odd. But its in the name of saving and it works, I promise. Instead of paying say upwards of $25 on a meal and drinks, you’ll pay maybe $5 depending on how fancy your drink is. (I’d opt for the americano or drip coffee which is about $2.50) If you really enjoy drinks, how about buying a bottle of wine (or whatever your drink of choice is) and hanging out at someone’s place? Drinks in restaurants and bars are up-charged! No need for that. My fav moscato wine is $10 for this huge bottle, that’s what I would likely pay for one glass in a bar.
Do not go into further debt. No big purchases because you do not need more things to pay off. I know Joe has posted on here about life style creep and it’s a true thing (as you get paid more you tend to spend more). You don’t need the latest phone, you don’t need the latest mini cooper model, you don’t need all the new clothes and things. What needs to happen is a habit change. We can’t make money and spend it as soon as we have it, we need to save it and re-assign it to the debt that will otherwise grow and make more debt. So there can not be large purchases during this time. I guess for most of us this can be a given and if debt is your #1 priority I doubt that you’re the person to go buy a house, car, and new phone all while already having debt. But just as a heads up, no.big.purchases.period.forever.and.ever. Okay big purchases have there time and place but not now! When we’ve got bigger things to accomplish!
Just start. Debt is hard, I didn’t look at $70k and get happy feelings. I actually got anxiety. My debt was monitored on an online loan company’s dashboard which would show me each month how much more interest I accrued and how much principle I had yet to pay off. Pretty little pie charts (and honestly great visuals) showed me in blue and green how much I owed from each loan I had taken out. It was hard to look at, and my heart raced the first few months I went back to visit that site. But what matters is that you start, its a daunting number and may seem like nothing is changing right now but little by little things change and debt goes down.