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I am trying to figure out how to balance living and enjoying life now while seeing my student loans as my “mortgage” or deciding to refinance and trying to pay off as much as possible. Is there some middle ground? I don’t want to sacrifice my life now as there is NO guarantee for the future. Do you have any advice on how to evaluate the best move so I can balance the importance of paying off debt but also enjoy life?

This is such a great question and it requires a ton of unpacking! The repayment strategy that fits best with your life is one that meets both your financial goals and your life goals. It can be tough to strike a perfect balance but here are some tips that every borrower can apply.

1. Make an active decision about your repayment strategy.

It often feels like student loan debt is looming over you and try as you might to ignore it, student loan debt nags at your consciousness. If your student loan debt is hanging over you it can often help to make an active decision about your repayment strategy. That means taking a good look at what you want for yourself financially and what you want for your life and finding a strategy that helps you balance those desires. I’ve often seen borrowers who get a lot of relief just from examining their situation and making an active choice, whether that’s repaying student loans slowly and over a long time like a mortgage or repaying student loans aggressively and sacrificing in the short term.

2. Figure out how much an aggressive repayment strategy would cost you each month and what you would have to sacrifice.

If you’re considering repaying aggressively (by refinancing or making extra monthly payments), a good first step is to simply figure out what aggressive monthly payments would look like and see how much that would actually impact your quality of life. You may be surprised to see that although aggressive repayment would require financial sacrifice, you don’t have to sacrifice as much as you thought and that you can still afford to do the most important things that enrich your life.

3. Make sure your financial house is in order before tackling student loan debt aggressively.

Aggressive repayment is just that, aggressive. That means there’s not a lot of margin for error on your part, so you want to have your ducks in a row. You need to have an emergency fund with at least three months expenses. You need to be contributing enough to your employer-sponsored retirement (if you have one) to get the full employer match. If you don’t have an employer-sponsored retirement you need to be contributing to an IRA. If you’re not able to afford to do these things, then I would advise against aggressive repayment.