This has surprised me. I've become addicted to paying off my student loans, and it scratches the same itch as buying stuff on Amazon.
I'm pretty frugal, but, until recently, I still spent a fair bit of money on Kindle books and the occasional $10 of Hearthstone cards.
But then I read the MMM post about how debt is an emergency fire that needs to be put out ASAP, and I've been diverting as much money as possible to my loans.
Now it's a daily habit to log onto MOHELA, pay anywhere from $10 to $100 towards my loans, then lean back for a moment and feel good about myself. This is on top of my normal monthly payments. Now all of my "impulse money" is going towards increasing my net worth! It feels so empowering, which is a feeling I never anticipated from fiscal responsibility.
Now, instead of thinking I'll be saddled with these loans for years to come, I've made it my goal to have it paid off by the end of 2017. To do that, I need to average $68 a day in payments.
I've gone from 10.5k in June to 7.5k now. I've diverted almost all of my income to the loans after food, rent and utilities. A big reason I've been able to do this is buying an $80 used Schwinn, almost completely eliminating any spend on transit / lyft / whatever.
Next up for me, I have a pretty sweet gaming PC setup that I'm planning to sell before it depreciates too much. I think I can get about 2,000 for it all. I plan to put every dime towards the student loans, knocking out the highest interest of the three loans I have remaining.
It may seem like common sense to most of you, but for me this is a big deal. I've been terrible with money all throughout my 20's, and have been living paycheck to paycheck for as long as I've been living on my own.
Now that I'm almost 30, I've decided to finally get my shit together. My first milestone was paying off $1,500 of credit card debt, and now I've been focusing all of my energy on destroying these student loans. After that, I'll start saving for well... I don't know really. I'm pretty happy with my current life situation, no car, no family, and fairly stable expenses and lifestyle.
I guess my general goal is FIRE, but I feel like I'm so far behind the 8-ball that I'm basically fucked in that regard. But I'm going to try my best anyway. I currently make about 45k / year, but pay almost $1,000 / month in rent and utilities. I'm going to make a big effort in the next two months to reduce time wasted on gaming and internet and focus on improving my income and finding a cheaper place to live (possibly by moving to a far cheaper city.)
Anyways, thanks for reading this rather scattershot post. I wanted to become a bit more active in this community because it's given so much to me. Thanks to all of you whose financial advice I've lurked off of for the past four months.
Edit: some edits for clarity and brevity.
Submitted September 14, 2017 at 10:50PM by Lord_Yupa http://ift.tt/2wto8z6
