3, 2, 1... WE'RE DEBT FREE! $73K paid off in 3 years (all of it student loans), while making a range of $45-95K.
We (or at least I) was introduced to Dave Ramsey's "7 Baby Steps" when we got married in 2012. At that point in time all we did was the zero-based budgeting (every dollar has a name) and cash envelopes. My husband paid off some/made payments on some of his loans in 2011-2012, while in military training (and thus not in school) before we married, so you could say his journey to debt freedom began in late 2011.
It wasn't until a year or two later that we read The Total Money Makeover together, despite having the book when we got married.
We then very slowly started Baby Step 1, which is to set aside $1,000 for a starter emergency fund. After we completed Baby Step 1, we reached the first jam. We didn't proceed to Baby Step 2, which is the "Debt Snowball" (pay off all of the debt smallest to largest, excluding the mortgage, as fast as you can), because we were still taking out student loans to pay for school and living expenses. Finally, Fall 2015 was the first time we paid cash for school!
After I graduated in 2015, we were able to pay off a couple of the really small student loans. We paused Baby Step 2 again in Fall 2016, but we used cash to pay for the final year of my husband's undergrad degree. It wasn't until Fall 2017 that we restarted the debt snowball, after we were no longer paying rent on two places.
We kept at the snowball until Fall 2018 when we paused again to go into "stork mode." All the extra money leftover at the end of the month that went to our student loans was now going into a baby medical fund. It's a good thing we did, too, because May 2019 we had to use some of it (after insurance and HSA) to cover a hospital bill for an unknown viral infection when he was not quite 2 months old (his delivery was uncomplicated and he was born very healthy).
Come Summer 2019 we took what was left of the baby medical fund and put that towards student loans. From that point, you could say it was smooth cruising. We didn't have to pause the debt snowball anymore.
Some months we were able to pay more toward the debt than others, but we always were able to throw money at it. Things that helped us were creating a budget and trying our best to stick to it, mini-celebrations after each loan was paid off, the pandemic, my husband going back to school for a master's degree, and discovering our why. For me it was so we can buy a home; we've been renting our entire marriage. For him it was so he can fly again; he got his pilots license in 2007 and hasn't flown since then.
For our mini-celebrations we chose to eat out at a restaurant because that is something we enjoyed doing before we started the steps. We rarely ate any place super fancy for our celebration because the big celebration comes when all the loans are paid off (I might write about it in a separate post). We tried to keep our celebration around $40-50 per loan paid off. We also tried to avoid eating out when a loan was not paid off (some months were better than others).
The pandemic helped our snowball because my husband was able to continue working the entire time, and because the interest-rate went to 0% and there were no minimum payments. The no interest and being able to focus solely on the smallest loan without having to pay minimum payments on all the rest was a HUGE help.
My husband going back to school (paid all in cash) helped because he is reimbursed through work and received money from the VA through the GI Bill.
