7 Hard (But Worth it) Things We Did to Pay Off $144,000 of Debt

Ten years ago we achieved our family’s goal of being debt-free after paying off $144,000 of student loan debt! It wasn’t easy, but we had some fierce determination and four supportive little ones on our side.

My husband Mike and I both graduated debt-free with our undergraduate degrees, but when my husband felt like he needed to further his education, we ended up with six figures of student loan debt for his JD and MBA degrees.

Mike started his post-law school career at a small firm earning less than he was making before going to law school. We knew our payoff was going to be a test of endurance, not a sprint.

We chose to do some hard things in order to expedite our payoff and we wouldn’t change a thing!

Here are 7 hard things we did to pay off six figures of student debt that were totally worth it!

1- We stuck to a written budget

There’s no doubt that budgeting takes discipline. We had tried budgeting in the past, but always ended up doing a “mental” budget by default (that doesn’t work very well, by the way). We were never really held accountable but always managed to squeak by.

This time we were serious about budgeting. We held ourselves accountable as we focused on our goal. We started using YNAB for our budget in January 2014. Learning to live on last month’s income was a major aha! moment for us that has honestly revolutionized the way we view and use a budget. We still use and love YNAB to this day.

During our debt payoff journey, Mike and I faithfully had monthly budget meetings where we would assess the past month’s spending and put all extra funds toward debt. Knowing the monthly review was coming up made it easier to avoid spending money on anything but absolute essentials unless we agreed beforehand on something extra. Accountability was just weeks or days away! It wasn’t just the accountability, though. Seeing our slow but steady progress each month kept us excited and motivated. We would plan how we would allot our money for the new month and celebrate our progress.

Making the effort to follow a written budget wasn’t easy, but it was essential to our successful debt payoff.

2- We drove old cars

We’ve never purchased brand new cars. We’ve always purchased used cars with cash (and it usually works out really well). When I say “used,” I’m not talking about last years model or cars that just got off a lease. When I say used I mean like twenty years of used. Our cars are safe and functional, but not fancy with bells and whistles.

As an attorney, my husband sometimes visits his clients at their homes. On occasion, his clients have even asked him why he doesn’t drive a luxury car like other attorneys!

We aren’t embarrassed. We are secure in our decision to put our money toward other things that matter more to us than having an expensive car. We’ve never had a car payment and we still aren’t planning to get one, even ten years after paying off our debt.

I was recently reading some of my writing from our extra frugal debt payoff days and I was humbled by the car experiences that I had forgotten. Dealing with older cars can be hard, but not having a car payment really facilitated our debt payoff success.

3- We learned to say NO

While we were giving our all to paying off debt, we turned down many opportunities to spend money on non-essentials. Everything from trips, entertainment that costs money, kids sports, school pictures, going out to eat, buying new clothes, and the list goes on and on.

So much of a debt payoff journey is characterized by your attitude. While we did tell ourselves and others “no” when it came to most optional spending opportunities, it felt more like a “not right now” than a hard, harsh NO. We knew these NOs were just for a time and once our debt was paid off we could decide if we wanted to add those costs back in.

Now, ten years later, we still don’t purchase school pictures, eat out regularly, or do some of the other things that people think are necessary. We have, however, added travel into our priorities, which I love. Check out where we’ve gone!

Although saying no can be hard, paying off our debt was well worth the sacrifices.

4- We said YES too

We said yes to doing frugal things that I never thought we would do. In my mind and from my experience, I thought some of what we were doing in order to pay off debt qualified as “extreme frugality,” though Mike thought otherwise.

Our frugality was research-based in some cases. I did the math to see if it was cheaper to buy bread from the store or make it from scratch. I calculated which car was cheaper to drive and moved cumbersome car seats back and forth so that we were always driving the cheaper car when we could. I did the math to decide if stocking up on turkeys at Thanksgiving was actually worth it after considering the weight of all of the bones.

We said yes to gardening. I learned to can tomato puree, make and can homemade applesauce, make fruit leather, and homemade yogurt. I stretched ground beef with pureed veggies and made our own pancake mix. We ate simple, non-glamorous meals at home.

Was it easy to say yes to all of this frugal living? Of course not! But paying off our six figure debt on a small salary in three years made the experience well worth it!

5- We lived in my In-Laws’ Unfinished Basement

Our initial plan after landing a job after law school was to buy a house and settle down with our family. However, with our enormous student loan debt, we felt very uneasy about taking on a mortgage. Knowing that we had student loan debt to pay off, Mike’s parents offered to let us live in their unfinished basement rent-free while we paid off debt.

We lived among their storage and ours. It was not beautiful but it was sufficient. Living with family while paying off debt gave us a huge advantage. Normally housing costs are the single largest expense for a family. Eliminating those costs allowed us to be laser-focused on our debt.

While not everyone has the opportunity to live rent-free (or would be willing to take it if they did), there are sometimes other opportunities that, while not glamorous in the least, are doable for the short-term. We are so grateful for the sacrifice Mike’s parents made to house us for three years.

6- We started side businesses

I’ve had an Etsy shop on the side for years; that’s what paid for our groceries during law school. I used my Cricut cutting machine to create cute banners and cupcake toppers for birthdays and baby showers.

In addition to my Etsy shop, I decided to start a blog to document our huge goal of paying off six figures of student loan debt. I knew that transparently sharing our story and everything that we were learning as we locked in on frugal living and debt payoff would be a great blogging opportunity, one that I could (and did) eventually earn money with. It helped that I posted faithfully three days a week back then. Lots has changed in the past ten years. Let’s just say I made ten times more money blogging in 2016 that I’ll be making in 2026!

Mike also started his own side business. In addition to his 9 to 5 job, he started taking private clients (in a completely different area of law than his day job). He still does this today. He has been able to scale it as much as he has time for at any given season in life.

The extra income from my Etsy shop, this blog, and my husband’s private law practice made an enormous difference in our ability to pay down debt quickly. It wasn’t easy, but it was worth it!

7- We kept our eye on our goal

Living in my in-laws’ basement did more for us than give us a free place to live. It was almost like a debt payoff super power in a non-financial way. Living in a cluttered, unfinished basement was a constant reminder of our goal. When it felt hard to live frugally or say no to spending, when we had growing pains with our budget and drama with our old cars, our living situation reminded us to keep going. We knew that if we kept putting one foot in front of the other we would eventually come out on the other side.

Looking back at everything we did through or three-year debt payoff, I am so proud of how we stayed focused on our goal. We did it all while raising 3 to 4 little humans. In fact those kids were part of our team. We were open about our family goal and got the kids involved. There were times when I almost caved to spending (In-N-Out, I’m looking at you), only to have my sweet little ones remind me about our goal!

Keeping ourselves focused on our debt payoff goal and united in our efforts to achieve it wasn’t easy, but it was so worth it!

Your own debt-free journey

This has been a fun walk down memory lane for me, but I know many of you are in the middle of your debt-free journey right now. Your sacrifices and struggles in your debt-free journey may be completely different than ours, but I hope this encourages you to know that the hard things that you’re doing now will be worth it.

Years after our debt-free journey, I discovered a really cool tool designed specifically to help people get out of debt faster. I looked into it extensively before deciding whether to recommend it or not. I won’t go into all the details here because I wrote a detailed post outlining everything this debt-free calculator does (it’s way more than a calculator). I would have loved to have something like this during our debt-free journey! There aren’t very many “extra” things I would recommend to people working hard to pay off debt, but this is one of the few. It will be the best $14 you spend on your debt payoff.