In 2018 I finally crushed my student loan repayment goal. Everyone is going to have their own set of financial circumstances and their own student loan goals. Below I talk about what it took for me to meet my goal and pay almost $44,000 toward my student loan debt last year.
Estimated read time ~7 minutes, estimated watch time at 1.5x ~5 minutes.
Last week I shared my 2018 student loan repayment progress, you can check that post out here.
A Very Specific Repayment Goal
At the beginning of 2018 I was coming off a disappointing year of repayment. In 2017 I paid <$24,000 on my student loans and was really disappointed in myself. I set a very specific goal, that I would pay at least $3,000 a month, each month, toward my student loans for a total of $36,000 in 2018.
The End Was in Sight
2018 was the first year that I really felt like I could see the end of my student loan repayment path. With just about half of my original $132,000 balance remaining to start off the year I could visualize being debt free.
Imagining myself being free of the weight of my student loans gave me the motivation to make small sacrifices and stick to my repayment goal each month. For me, knowing that I wouldn’t have to sacrifice for much longer made it easier to pay extra now.
All Extra Money Toward Loans
I knew one of the things that would help me meet my goal and then some would be to put all my extra money toward my student loans. That meant every time I picked up an extra shift at work, or got an influx of extra money, I put it all toward my student loans.
Last year was the first time I put an entire tax return toward my student loans, and that sucked to be honest because I wanted to spend it on something fun. But I knew it was getting to my #debtfreedream just a little bit faster.
Sometimes I would have pretty small amounts of extra money to put toward my student loans, maybe only $100. In the past I used to think that money was too small to matter much, after all it’s less than 1/10th of my minimum monthly payment. This year, I decided all amounts of extra money helped.
Gave Up Some Things
Typically I take one big vacation with my fiance every year. Unfortunately 2018 was a year of PTO denial and we couldn’t get any time off together to take our planned trip. That meant we didn’t have a big vacation and I ended up putting the money I would’ve spent on that toward my student loans.
In 2017 I spent thousands of dollars removing a couple of trees and fencing in the yard for my dog. But in 2018 I didn’t have any big expenses like that. Our couch is getting worn out, I can’t get the dishwasher open, and I cracked the plastic housing of my car’s side mirror, but I’m pushing those expenses off until they’re really necessary so I can keep plugging away toward my goal.
Tracked my Progress
What gets measured gets done. It’s very simple, so this year I tracked my progress and celebrated milestones. I paid off $100,000 in principal this year and took the time to take notice of that fact and celebrate it. I also tracked my monthly & quarterly progress to make sure I was where I wanted to be.
Started a New Job
Another huge reason I overachieved my student loan repayment goal was the fact that I started a new job. In September I was offered a position at Tuition.io, a student loan repayment benefit company, in Silicon Valley.
I’m still a licensed pharmacist, working on-call at the hospital a few shifts here and there. But now my full-time job is to help employers solve their staffing concerns by solving student loan debt problem for their employees. It’s a pretty awesome thing to do. I work remotely from Wisconsin so my cost of living expenses didn’t skyrocket.
Starting a new job wouldn’t necessarily help me pay off my student loans faster. In my case it did because I hadn’t been able to use a significant amount of my PTO for about a year at the hospital. That meant I had banked 290 hours of PTO. When I dropped down to on-call status from full-time those hours were cashed out.
Even though that money was taxed way more than I could have guessed, it still left me over $9,000 to split between saving up for my wedding and paying extra on my student loans. The PTO cash also really helped me prevent the situation where funding my wedding ate into my ability to pay down my student loans. Because with that lump sum and a little extra savings I’ve funded my half of the wedding, assuming I can stick to my budget!
My new employer is a student loan repayment benefit company. That means they contribute $100 a month directly toward my student loans. So while I’ve only gotten three months of that benefit, every little bit helps!
Those are all the things that really worked in my favor in 2018 to help me really tackle my student loan debt. I feel very grateful about all of it, and most of all very grateful that I’m almost done paying back my student loan debt.
I love hearing from my fellow repayers. So I want to know, what helped you reach your student loan repayment goals in 2018? Leave me a comment below or on the Repayable Facebook Page. See you next week!
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