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Ever since I paid off over $100,000 in student loan debt, it's like a huge weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.
When I first started this journey I was so stressed—I didn't think I could do it. Now, I have around $20,000 left to pay, but it feels like chump change compared to the thousands of dollars I have already paid off.
While my advice is a little different depending on how far you are into tackling your loan, for those who are just starting out and want to get the ball rolling, I wanted to share the tips that helped me pay off $100,175.18 worth of student loans in less than three years.
My first piece of advice is to set a budget. It's important to know and understand what your fixed expenses are versus what your variable expenses are, and how much room you have in your budget to go ahead and pay down those student loans.
In addition to a budget, I recommend setting up a debt payoff strategy. There are various types, but I personally like zero-based budgeting, which allocates every cent of your money into categories that work for you, such as groceries or household bills.
I like to know where every single cent of my paycheck is going before it even hits. This method doesn't allow me room to say: "Oh I have $500, I can just spend it however I want."
I'm not rigid in the sense that I have to spend every dollar on a specific category. I can move cash from my fun money bucket to my groceries or dining out category, but I will always stick to the budget to make sure that I'm paying off my student loans.
The one category I never pull from is my student loan budget. Come hell or high water, that money is getting paid off—that's one thing I have been disciplined about every single month.
I have also increased the amount I pay off depending on life changes; a raise at work or moving back home, allowing for a larger portion of my money to go towards paying off my student loans.
My second tip is to also develop a student loan payoff strategy. There are two main types that I'm aware of: The avalanche and the snowball methods.
The former involves paying the smallest of your loans first, so it feels easier to manage, and the latter focuses on the loan with the highest interest rate, in an attempt to reduce the amount you pay over an extended period of time.
Many people like the snowball method because it offers a sense of immediate gratification. "Yay, I paid off another debt bill." Often it helps people to keep going.
However, I'm not really that type of person. I want to tackle the loan with the highest interest rate so that I'm not paying unnecessary additional interest. In that way, I am very disciplined. I will keep climbing regardless of how high the mountain feels.
The snowball method never worked for me, but you have to know yourself, and choose whichever works best so it allows you to keep going and not get distracted.
My third tip is to look for a community of people who are also paying off student loans. When I started my journey I would speak to anyone about my loans; family, friends, work colleagues. The topic always came up for me because that's all I cared about. As soon as I graduated law school, my number one priority was paying off my student loans.
I would say: "Look at these student loans, it's predatory." But many people got tired of hearing me complaining. Although many of my friends have student loan debt, some of them are not as concerned.
They're taking it slowly, saying: "Well I'm going to be paying it off for forever. I'm not gonna let it stop my life. I'm still going to buy a house, I'm still going to live my life."
While I respect their choices, I didn't take that position, and wanted to look for people who shared the same view as me. I really needed that community to help me keep going forward.
So anytime that I paid off a student loan amount I would hop on to Facebook or Reddit, where there's a whole bunch of support groups you can join, and I would post saying how much I had paid.
There was always someone who was congratulating me, always someone who said: "Yes, you've got to keep going." That really helped my psyche, and I'm pretty sure it helped my family and friends that I shared my frustration with other people and stopped complaining to them.
Building that community made us strong together as a unit and really helped me progress forward as I continued to pay off my student debt.
My next piece of advice would be to look into refinancing options. Before federal student loan interest was paused—which means that until September 1, 2023, the interest rate for federal student loans was zero percent—I was considering this avenue.
Many of my rates were at around six or seven percent, and I thought I could get a lower rate through refinancing. Since the pause, I haven't had to do that, and I don't plan to in the future.
However, if your debt is larger than mine, as the pause ends and we restart accruing interest, you may want to consider different loan providers that offer a lower rate than the federal government.
Finally, I recommend being patient.
I didn't take my own advice and remember checking that student loan site every single day like the number was going to magically go down when I first started out.
While I have since stopped making direct loan repayments—I have the money sitting in a high-yield savings account—back when it first started, and the interest was paused, I did pay and would log on the next day to see how much it brought it down.
I would spend hours researching how much I had to pay to repay the debt in three or four years. I would wake up and start crunching numbers trying to figure it out, which was not healthy and caused a lot of anxiety.
Live your life, give yourself that grace. You didn't accumulate all those student loans in six months, so you're not going to be able to pay them off in six months.
This system is rigged against us so it is going to take you a while, and that's okay. When you make a large payoff, you can treat yourself a little bit. Don't burn yourself out, it's not good for your mental health and you'll never be able to get out of that cycle.
Have grace and be patient.
Arielle Yasmine is a lifestyle and finance blogger. You can follow her on Instagram and YouTube.
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
Do you have a unique experience or personal story to share? Email the My Turn team at myturn@newsweek.com.
