I am so happy that my bloggy buddy Kim from Thrifty Little Mom is letting me borrow some of her blog space! This post is all about how I am working towards dumping my student loan debt without eating too much into our budget.
My journey through college is a little different from most but not all that crazy. I started college off on the right foot, right after high school with a scholarship and getting good grades. Then somewhere in the middle of my first semester, I started slacking off. I am not sure exactly what happened, maybe I just got lazy but I was over the whole going to class thing and by the end of my third semester of college I had not only lost my scholarship but had been put on academic suspension for a semester.
That began a series of trying to find a job in the “real world” that was decent without a college education. After years working in retail and then transitioning to the world of Administrative Assistant, I was over making pennies compared to my college-educated friends doing the same work as me.
Therefore, I went back to school, only this time there was no scholarship despite applying to everyone I even remotely qualified for. Not being a patient person, I did the next thing that seemed to make sense to me at the time – I took out student loans. Thankfully, I was smart enough to not take out more than I needed since I had a fulltime job to pay the bills.
It has been three years since I graduated with my degree and since I had to start paying back those dreaded student loans. Since my family is on a one income and has been since I graduated and our goal this year is to have my student loans paid for by December 31st, I have had to get a little creative with my pay off strategy.
Linked Up To: The Thrifty Couple
New to my site?
I love writing about my family's journey towards financial freedom and about ways to optimize your life, save money, and live well! Here are a few more ways you can save money:
- Cook at home. During our debt-free journey we NEVER went out to eat because we honestly couldn't afford it, and now, even though we could afford it, we still don't go out to eat that often. But I'll be honest, meal planning was such a struggle for me during that time, but it totally saved our budget when I did it effectively! I ended up using a meal planning service for about two years which helped me not only meal plan better, but also helped me to create wholesome, healthy, and delicious meals for my whole family! You can see all the details and try different meal plans based on your preferences here .
- Earn gift cards. A simple way to earn a little extra money from home by using the Swagbucks site instead of Google for searching. I actually still do this to earn Home Depot gift cards for all our home projects. You can also do surveys and a few other things to earn points, which you redeem to purchase gift cards from them. Swagbucks is what we used to earn Amazon gift cards to help pay for Christmas or cash through PayPal to help pay off our debt faster. You can sign up for Swagbucks here.
- Switch Cell Phone Providers. One of the best things we did on the debt-free journey was to switch from our super expensive $150+ a month cell phone bill to a much more affordable plan! In fact, my cell phone bill is only $30 a month (my husband's plan is paid by his business)! Check out Mint Mobile here to see if you can save your family some money!
- Create a budget. It took us a while to figure out a budget that works well for our family, but the two things that we have used over the years and still do (and still love) are my Budget Binder and Personal Capital (online budgeting software). You can see my Budget Binder tutorial here and check out Personal Capital here.
I don’t see a link to the entire blog post.
Apparently, I was half asleep this morning! 🙂 It has been fixed and should be working. Thank you so much for catching my oversight!