Hey, all — Shared this with my /r/studentloans friends, who gave good feedback. Passing along to you guys.
My student loan debt, in one chart.
Quick background: I'm going on four years removed from an out-of-state school that left me about 24K in debt and degrees in journalism and business. I HATE my student loans. I'm bad about paying them, and I try hard not to ever think about them.
I finally sat down and charted both my debt and my progress toward paying it off. Green bar is total debt, red line is how much I paid on it each month.
What I learned: Seeing my debt laid out visually made it feel real in a way I had never really experienced. They're not just vague and intimidatingly big numbers anymore. Seeing my progress (or lack there of) also inspired me to kick its ass.
I now get more satisfaction out of seeing that damned green bar shrink than I would out of buying a lot of other cheap/disposable things, too, so it's directly helped me make sacrifices.
I still could be more consistent in my monthly payments, but since I started taking this more seriously, I've stopped paying just the minimum (or forgetting about paying at all). The difference is huge.
I also came up with a little game — each time the bar dips below another 1K threshold, I buy myself a sixer of nice beer. The first sip always tastes a little sweeter.
How I made it: I used Infogram. It's a free service that's really easy to use. Someone with an ounce of Excel skill could blow this out of the water with something more dynamic, but Infogram worked for me. Here is what my data field looks like. The whole process took about 20 minutes.
Might not work for everyone, and I'm sorry if this idea is super-obvious to the $$$ savvy here, but it sure worked for me.
Cheers, and happy debt-paying.
Submitted February 27, 2017 at 03:55PM by JoeySaratoga http://ift.tt/2lZxyRG
