My wife and I paid off $55,000 of debt to reach debt freedom. It was a long journey, but being debt free and building wealth is an incredible feeling, a feeling I want to help other people achieve in their lives.
My name is Matt from Spills Spot, a blog where I write about my personal finance journey with the goal of inspiring others to be more interested in personal finance and improve at managing their money. You can connect with me on Twitter @mattspills8
Table of Contents
What do you do for a living?
I work in Customer Marketing for a tech company. My job is to tell the story of how our customers use our technology to be leaders and innovators in their industries.
Do you have a degree and are you currently using your degree?
Yes, I graduated with a Business – Sports Marketing degree. I started out pursuing a full-time job in sports, but after working a few seasons in part-time and intern roles, I pivoted.
I started pursuing full-time marketing roles in other industries. Eventually I landed a Content Marketing role with a startup and worked there for two years.
Now I’ve been working in this Customer Marketing role for about two years.
I still work in sports as my side hustle, and I’m building marketable skills along the way.
I think my ultimate goal is still to transition back into a full-time role in the sports industry someday, but right now I’m happy where I’m at!
How long have you worked in your field and what is your current salary range?
I’ve worked in a corporate setting for about 4 years, my salary range is between $70K-80K.
What major debt have you paid off that you feel is a hurrah moment for you?
We paid off $40k of student loans and a $15k car loan, in about 4.5 years. $40k was paid off in the last 2.5 years of that journey.
While we encountered a number of obstacles along the way, including an unexpected layoff from my job, reaching debt freedom was a huge focus for us.
Achieving this goal was a big weight off our shoulders when we finally reached the finish line!
Describe to us in detail, the strategies you used to pay off that/those debt(s)
There were a lot of strategies we used for paying off our debt. We went through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace to help give us the foundation to start the journey. Is was very helpful for us to get on the same page, break it down into smaller steps, and make this daunting goal feel achievable.
Other keys to our debt repayment journey included:
- Determine why you want to be debt free? When the going gets tough you need to be able to remember your motivation for starting the journey in the first place.
- Build up an emergency fund to protect against unexpected expenses and avoid going further into debt.
- Track your spending and cut out unnecessary expenses. We switched our car insurance, cut cable, switched our cell phone provider, cooked almost all of our meals at home, chose free/cheaper methods of entertainment, started using travel rewards, sold items we no longer needed, and more.
- Increased our income at our day jobs and through side hustles.
- Automate your debt payments.
All the extra money that we saved from cutting our expenses and the extra income we made, all went straight towards paying off our debt.
Ultimately you want to grow the gap between your income and expenses as large as possible, and then use that gap to aggressively pay off your debt.
The journey of crushing your debt will take time, persistence, and discipline, but it’s well worth it.
Be sure to stay patient, find friends and family members to help keep you accountable, and celebrate your milestones along the way!
Do you have any other debt left? What kind of debt? What are your goals to pay off this debt?
We’re debt free! We finished paying off our student loans in March 2018 and our car loan in July 2018 to reach debt freedom.
Do you budget? Why or why not? Which method do you use?
Yes, we do a monthly budget with Mint and I’m a HUGE fan. My biggest piece of advice for people who want to get their finances better organized is to track your spending.
Tracking our spending has been life changing for us. Without knowing where the money is going each month, you can’t improve your situation.
Mint makes everything easy and automated. It took us 3-4 months to figure out a budget that worked for us, but now making the budget each month takes 5 minutes since our expenses month-to-month are very similar.
What percentage of your monthly income do you save?
This may sound like a strange answer coming from a financial blogger, but I don’t track my savings rate too closely every month.
It’s something I definitely need to start doing more consistently. We save about 40%. I track our expenses closely and our net worth monthly to ensure we’re on the right track.
Do you have any passive income sources?
At this point we make about $50-100 per month in dividends and my blog makes a little bit of money each month.
We have no other passive income sources yet. I work a side hustle with a minor league baseball team to bring in extra income and my goal is to build my blog to the point where it brings in more consistent monthly income.
Do you rent or own your own home/condo/apartment?
We currently rent a 1 bedroom apartment, about 700 square feet for the two of us and our two small dogs. It’s cozy, but we don’t need more space.
Which side of the argument are you in terms of paying off mortgage vs investing?
My opinion is that you should go with whatever you’re more excited about, whether that’s seeing the mortgage balance go down or your investment accounts go up.
We don’t own real estate yet, but I think when we do we’ll probably take a hybrid approach, with slightly more going towards the investing side.
There you go. Another awesome motivational interview to get out of debt.
Please share and let us know how if you are debt free and if not, whats your plan?
Here is the link to binge on all the get out of debt series
Other posts in the series include
Xrayvsn crawled out of $600,000 debt and the worst divorce in history and still managed to reach financial freedom.
From one Geek To Another became debt free at a tender age of 27.
Money Saved Is Money Earned is the master in stretching that dollar. Low income did not stop him from getting out of debt.
How We Paid Off $340,000 Mortgage In 3 Years By Saving 86.5% Of Our Income (By HisHerMoneyGuide)
Wealthy Doc became financially independent in 17 years after starting his real job.
Marc from Vital Dollar paid off his 30 years mortgage in just 4 years.
Millionaire Mob, a guru investor showed us how to get out of debt.
The frugal fellow lived with his parents to pay off debt and he is not ashamed of it
Check out some of the tricks we used to pay off over $200,000 student loan debt by 6 months out of training.
I am a pulmonary and critical care doctor by day and personal finance blogger/debt slaying ninja by night.
After paying off close to $300,000 in student loan debt in less than 6 months into my real job, I started on a mission to help others achieve the same. There is no magic to this than to strap up and get it done. Some of the ways we achieved this include side hustle, budgeting, great negotiation skills, and geographical arbitrage.
When I was growing up, common knowledge in Nigeria is that there is one thing you cannot trust anyone else with, and you guessed it – your money.
Being frugal came easily to me based on my background. However, the concept of building wealth did not solidify in my mind until when I finished medical school. I wish I knew what I know now when I was 14. Still, I don’t know enough and I am constantly learning to improve my knowledge.
My goal is to reduce financial illiteracy among young professionals. I am catering to the beginners – babies and toddlers in financial literacy.
Leave a Reply