Question

Can we start a thread about how fast you paid off a lot of debt? Like paying off $30k+ in a year or less and how did you do it? Tell us your amazing accomplishments!  

Answer 1

I became a Surrogate! ♥️

Comments

Wow! How amazing there are several of you on here who are surrogates. The joy you are bringing to those families!  

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@outlander thank you!  

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@contrail it will be hard to do, but I have been mentally preparing myself and building my support system, as I've hesr from previous surrogates that ppd is most likely in surrogacy.  

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@overbalance this is my dream! Got all the way through the process until the final medical review and they found I had developed PCOS from my IUD. I was so upset! Still am  

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@clio89 aaaw I'm sorry! Can they be removed?  

Answer 2

We paid off $35k from June to December last year. We have another $50k to be debt free, which I expect will be by this fall. :)

Comments

@loophole76379 awesome

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@loophole76379 that’s incredible- what did you do?  

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@alisun Drastically cut out almost all spending! Hardly eating out, no new clothes or shoes unless necessary. bare bones living! And I picked up a second job a couple nights a month.  

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@loophole76379 so impressive! If only I could get my husband on board  

Answer 3

$30, 000 from February of 2019 until December of 2019. I took on every remote side job I could, I also did curriculum writing and I worked summer school, and my family and I did not go on any vacations or do anything else besides pay off debt unless it was free or cheap.  

Comments

@cyclometer interested about remote jobs how did you find them?!  

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@stimulus my husband did random side jobs last year through a job agency, companies just send one day jobs (or however long) they need done to this agency and then they call you to see if you're interested. He literally held a sign outside of kmart (when it was closing) for 10 hours every weekend he made $100 under the table for like 3 months. He also got hired to move things out of a local factory when they moved buildings, and he helped a butcher cut meat when one of his workers had broken his fingers. He did all these while maintaining a security job at a hospital during the day and building windows at a local factory for the midnight shift. There's all kind of random extra work out there!  

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@stimulus Honestly, I did Google searches for "remote writing", "remote editing", "remote teaching" and "remote grading/rater". I wound up doing a few grading and rating positions which were fantastic. Hoping to do them again this year.  

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@cyclometer thank you for the info

Answer 4

We should be able to pay off about 30K this year but it’s from a pension and signing bonus. It is an absolute blessing since I’m not sure I’ll have any income at all after June of this year.  

Answer 5

Hubs and I are now living under the same roof/continent again. Paying two of everything killed our finances. but work/duty calls ‍♀️ We live off his income and mine went to paying off the credit card. Now on to saving!  

Answer 6

We paid off 30k in a year. Hustled our butts off and watched our food consumption and non essential expenses. We did manage to keep our son in private school at the same time. It was tough but we managed. Kept all our monthly expenses under 1800 (save for tuition).  

Answer 7

On our way of paying off about $32, 000 by July. Tax return kicked off our debt payoff. We are doing the avalanche method. Buckling down, stop spending money on needless crap but still living. My son is in select baseball and that cost a good amount of money with tournaments and being out all day so I’m budgeting for that. It’s just writing everything out, not eating out as much, making that weekly meal plan and writing a grocery list and sticking to that when you shop. It’s some sacrifice for a big reward at the end. When I started this we wasted so much money. When I buckled down and wrote everything out I’m almost died I was shocked. We had so much money we could’ve used for debt but we just wasted it on crap. I started last April did good for a while kinda sorta let up the last 2 months of the year. Recovered a bit last month and in full force this month going forward. My budget is made all they way til end of July and everything is budgeted for, baseball and debt pay off. My husband is on board and we talked to our kids about being on a budget so they know we can’t just go to Chick-fil-a cause we want to. We see that light and it’s shining bright waiting for us!  

Answer 8

Not 30k exactly, but started with 25k of debt in October 2019 and we will be debt free next month when my husband gets home and we finally make those last payments. So we will have 25k (credit card, car loan, and student loans) paid off in 6 months. We got serious about our budget and threw everything we had toward debt. We stopped throwing our money away on frivolous things and sat down to have an honest conversation about our financial goals. We are also blessed to have family that were able to financially support us on this journey and we got a generous gift from my husband’s grandparents to help us pay our debt down even faster at Christmas time. So grateful that we will be 100% debt free at a young age! Makes me excited for the future ♡

Answer 9

I took a role where I traveled full time for almost a year so literally my only expenses were personal bills and food. All of my belongings were in storage paid for by my company so I lived out of my two suitcases that entire time. It has really advanced my life financially and career experience wise but it also was incredibly stressful, isolating and I’m pretty sure took a few years off my life span. It afforded me the ability to lower my student loans from $52k to $15k, fund a cross country move, mostly all new furnishings, purchase a car w/ a sizable down payment & have an EF with 3 months of living expenses.  

Comments

@fite3 I think you'll gain back those years by not having to stress about debt for decades or forever!  

Answer 10

We are on track to pay 30k by end of December but we also saving 10k into our saving at the same time so unless we change our mind waiting until December we will pay it off by September.  

Answer 11

We’ve paid off 30, 000 since September. First cut was dining out and extensively tweaking a grocery budget, second step was eliminating subscriptions and gym memberships, third step was only buying necessities. We had some cash in savings which helped initially and now we are working extra to attempt to keep the momentum.  

Answer 12

Make more money. there's no way at one point we even have an extra 30k tied up in stuff other than the cost of living.