Hey everyone! I'm so stoked to share this interview with you today!!! I recently reached out to all of you in search of some great debt repayment stories, and I got so many that I'm still sorting through them. This particular one from a reader named Elizabeth stood out, so I wanted to share her and her husband's story.
She has some killer tips on side hustles, making sacrifices, and even included the budget she uses (which you can download at the end of the interview). Enjoy! ~M$M
1. How much was your original debt load, and was it all student loan debt?
Our original combined student loan debt was $72,000. We do have a mortgage, but plan to double our monthly payments on our house as soon as we get our student loans paid off, and establish our fully loaded emergency fund!
2. What did you go to school for and what do you do now?
My husband and I both went to school and got our BA in Ministerial Leadership. With those degrees, my husband is a full time Worship/Creative Pastor, and I work part-time as the Assistant Site Director to our church’s Ministry College on campus.
Before going back to school to get ministry degrees, I recieved a culinary degree in baking and pastry, and use that degree and skills from school to do cakes on the side.
Read also: How We Paid Off $24,000 of Student Loan Debt in 11 Months
3. You said you paid off $13,500 in the last 3 months (which is incredible)! What were the most effective strategies that you used to make it happen?
The most effective strategy has been doing the Debt Snowball, suggested by Dave Ramsey. We drained our saving account to just $1,000 (it almost gave me a heart attack), and with that we paid off a higher interest $6,000 loan.
We also used our tax return money to tackle a good portion of that debt, as well as use our side jobs to throw as much extra money as well could to the loans.
The biggest way we earn side money is through renting out two of our rooms to friends at the church. That brings in almost $600 a month that we don’t have to work for or really think about to put towards loans.
Thankfully our house is set up where our Master bedroom is on the other side from the other two rooms and their bath, so we still have plenty of privacy, and my husband and I love the community renting out those rooms does in our house.
4. What were your biggest sacrifices to make such large payments?
The biggest “sacrifice” would be sharing our home with people. Though we love it so much, it doesn’t really feel like we are sacrificing anything. We seriously love the community, and life it brings to our home.
A lot of our friends say that they could never do it, but it is that extra money my husband and I can use to go on a date night guilt free, or maybe take an inexpensive weekend trip without having to worry too much about the budget.
Related: How Two Teacher's Paid off $51,000 of Student Loan Debt in 18 Months
5. Do you talk to your friends and family about your story or do you keep it to yourself?
I love to tell our story. Just the other day, one of the other staff members at church told me I should think about teaching a financial class on a Wednesday night to encourage people mine and my husband’s age that you don’t have to carry debt with you into your later adult years.
Also, with running our Ministry College on campus, I am able to encourage 15-20 college students to start thinking about ways they can repay there loans now.
I have helped many of them develop a budget that works for them, and always stress the importance of saving for a rainy day.
6. You mentioned your mad budgeting skills when you sent me your story…do you have specific programs or Excel templates that you use?
Yes! I have tried many different apps like Mint and EveryDollar. However, the most useful budgeting method I found was on Google Sheets. It is their excel version, and they have a budget template that lets me input ALL of my spending, and then it categorizes it into the budget I created.
It has three columns, what I plan to spend, what I actually spend, and the difference. There are so many tools you can use out there, but I landed on this one, because I am a very hands on person, and this lets me customize my budget as little or as much as I want!
Real also: The Best Free Excel Budget Templates
(Keep reading to download their budget template!)
7. Tell me more about your side hustles! How did you get started with them?
My husband got started with DJing about four years ago, he would help a friend do gigs, and then eventually the friend started double booking himself so he could do a gig, and my husband, Taylor, do the other.
After about a year of Taylor doing gigs for our friend, he was like “I could do this myself”, and so we saved the money he made from his friend to buy his own equipment to start his own side gig.
Because I had a Baking & Pastry Degree, I was already doing birthday cakes, and wedding cakes on the side for friends, and so I got the idea of offering a combo DJ and Cake package, and hence our side hustle, “Cypress Events Services” was formed!
Read also: 8 Side Hustles You Can Start This Weekend!
8. Do you have any tips for people that want to start a side hustle that helps with paying off debt?
The best side hustle comes from something you already enjoy doing, and it doesn’t seem like a lot of work. If you are miserable making a little extra, then I feel like it isn’t a good trade off for getting out of debt quicker.
What are your hobbies, or what do you not mind doing for a few extra hours on a Saturday afternoon? One of our friends started a pressure washing business, and can choose to work as much or as little as he wants!
I think having a flexible side hustle is also important, because you still need to make time to enjoy your life, family, and friends!
9. How long do you think it will be before you pay off the rest of your student loans?
Our goal is before I turn 30. We started tackling the loans the month before my 25th birthday, and I calculated as long as we are able to throw $1,300 a month towards the loan, we can accomplish that goal!
My husband is six months younger than I am, so to be able to say we are debt free from everything but our house before we get into our thirties is huge for us.
When I first told my husband the number we needed to hit, he was and still is a little hesitant. You see, $1,300 is a huge chunk of our take home pay. After we pay bills, groceries, and gas, we don’t have a lot left over.
Because of that we rely heavily on our room rentals, our side hustles, and even selling some stuff to hit this number (my husband sold his motorcycle just so we could knock out another of our twenty one loans).
I understand reality happens, and there are some months we aren’t too busy with our side business, or the car needs to get the AC fix… again…. but as long as we strive towards that goal every month, I know that we are putting as much towards the loan as we can, and that is what matters to me.
It also helps that I calculated on the high side, and months were we get three paychecks, and tax returns will help us tremendously to achieve our 5 year (or less) goal!
10. If you could give people one piece of advice about money, what would it be?
The most important advice I can give is don’t let money consume you. I have to be very careful not to let every dollar control my life.
When we first started our debt payoff, I didn’t want to spend anything extra. I was perfectly okay with becoming a hermit just to get out of debt.
Thankfully my husband is there to balance me out, because without him, I wouldn’t let us have any enjoyment out of our earnings.
So I encourage you, even if you have to set aside one dollar everyday, save up for date nights and still be social with friends. There are so many less expensive items you can buy on the menu and still have good time.
When you do go out you can ask friends if they want to split a meal, order a kids meal, always get water, or encourage people to go get Mexican so you can just eat the free chips and salsa (yes I have done that multiple times)!
Also, it helps to keep your goals in front of you. On our refrigerator we have a list of all of our loans printed out.
Every time we are able to pay off a loan, we cross it off. Being able to see our progress helps us keep motivated and encourage that all of our extra work is paying off!
You can download Elizabeth's budget here!
You can download Elizabeth's SnowBall Loan Repayment Chart here!
Question for you:
What has been your most effective debt payoff strategy so far? Side hustles? Budgets?
Great interview, Bobby! It is great to hear other people’s side hustle stories. Ever since i graduated with six figure debt I have been doing side hustles, i had to to make my monthly payments. I have done all kinds of different side hustles the last few years. With the technology we have today it is so easy to do. Web design, VA, sharing economy, etc, there are so many options to make money on the side. Everyone with debt should start doing side hustles!
Glad you liked it! I totally agree – I taught myself how to build websites, run them, blog, market, etc. and now obviously it’s my full-time gig. So much opportunity out there!
Awesome story! By far the hardest thing I do to remain mone conscious is renting out my spare room. So I totally understand that sacrifice.
Thanks for sharing!
Yeah that one is tough – not sure I could do it haha
Renting out rooms and living with people has always been something that I’ve really enjoyed. The key is staying smart about who you rent to. The kind of people you open your home up to will make or break the whole thing!
I’m sure that could go bad quickly!
Tax returns and house hacking are great options to pay down debt quickly that most people could do (at least one of, hopefully). I’m trying to convince the wife to let us rent out a room, but we’ll see how that goes. I’m guessing she won’t be about it for a few months at least, and that’s fine.
Awesome read. That’s a huge amount of debt! I’m a big fan of using side hustles to crush debt and fuel investments. Getting good music and tasty treats on top is a bonus 🙂 Keep hammering through that debt Elizabeth! 🙂
For me, my biggest thing was drinking less (only one weekend night each week, maximum) and meal prepping helped too both on our grocery bill and our lunch expenses since we’re going out to eat far less often. I just wrote about that today, actually…and while we’re not using that money to pay off debt, we DID use that extra money to fund the wedding of our dreams which was a week and a half ago 🙂
Now to get my side hustle game going strong…
Ha good luck! Maybe she’ll come around?
I’m not banking on it, haha. And I get it, it’s not for everyone. I think at most we’ll do some dog sitting. Besides, let’s be real, dogs are often WAY better than people.
The big thing for me is that I want to make sure we’re more aggressively working on side hustles and bringing in income from some other way than our jobs. And both grow our income and keep lifestyle inflation in check.
Now that the wedding is done, I’ve got the extra time to dedicate to that sort of stuff.
Oh gosh, I have such mixed feelings about side hustles. I really do feel that your full-time job should be your main source of income since we all spend so much time there. But I could see the lure of side hustles. I do a side hustle (freelance writing) and I love it. But if it weren’t something I was passionate about in the first place and treated like a hobby, I’m sure I’d get burn out.
More Millennials killing it with money!
I love it!!!
Haha yes plenty of non-lazy versions of us out there!
House community + combo side hustle => WOW. Love this post. I’m currently on my debt free goal and hoping to end it by saying “Successfully paid off 50K of student loans in 2 years.”
It’s a tough goal and based on my math it take 2.5 years, so like you all, I constantly look for side hustle opportunities! Thanks for sharing – very motivating.
When you get there let me know and we’ll do a guest post on it 🙂
Debt free stories are BOMB! Love coming to the site and reading these.
Yeah they’re definitely fun
Elizabeth and her husband are totally killing it! It is very inspiring to read about people making sacrifices to get their financial life in order. Once their student loans are paid off, they will already have the discipline and routines in place to tackle their mortgage and build their wealth through investing.
I love the idea of renting rooms out, and I have brought this up to my husband, but right now, he’s not on board. Maybe once we start making that mortgage payment, he’ll come around to the idea.
I agree! It’s definitely a process that builds discipline. I don’t blame your husband haha, it would be hard for me to get on board with too!
Great story! And I love how they’re doing it. Not sure if my wife would go for sharing our home, though. Haha.
If you’re still looking for any more debt stories, Bobby, I’d be happy to share mine!
Yeah man shoot over an email 🙂
I have 2 side hustles, one I work as needed at a pool as a life guard/swim teacher (I do adult swim lessons so a commitment of 1 hour a week but if I sub, I can get up to a 6 hour day). Than a few years ago my BIL started Skinny Sticks Maple Syrup and now my husband, both of our boys and I work for him in various ways. Summer vacation means son1 (who is 13) is out helping him out with set up of demos or deliveries of the products. Hubby and son2 deliver products on 2 routes set up on every 6 weeks deliveries. While I work as needed on the production end.
However, none of our side hustles were needed to pay off student loans. I had those paid off before we wed and hubby worked full time while going to Tech school full time so he didn’t have to take out any loans (his parents helped with room and board – ie he lived at home). My pool job has paid our cheap vacations and for Christmas gifts, several years in a row. This spring son2 said he would give up a vacation to have the central air unit fixed. I wonder if it still stands for the furnace, the hot water heater, and perhaps he will also allow us to get a new well pump (really there isn’t this much available but everything has busted).
Hubby is against someone living with us as we only have 1 working bathroom. But for some reason he has never worked on putting in the 2nd bathroom for the 13 years we’ve owned our home.
To be fair – putting in a second bathroom sounds really really hard haha
We’ve had the tub and cement board for 10+ years, its all plumbed and the rough-in for the electrical is in. The area has its studs so all it really needs is a toilet, vanity and drywall (which after having husband do drywall once, it will need to be hired out. I should just youtube how to remodel a bathroom and start working on it myself.
My husband came into our relationship with a ton of debt from his previous marriage. He paid off $30,000 in one year prior to us getting married. It helped that he was able to live with his grandma and throw everything at it. His student loan is massive and combined with my student loans, two cars, motorcycle, the wedding, and a few various other things, we still had $139,958.10 in debt. We really started cracking down inFebruary when I put together a budget (I created my own on an excel spreadsheet because none of the ones I found fit my needs). Since that time (about 5 months ago) we have paid off over $22,000 in debt. Although we still have a LONG way to go, I am super proud of how far we have come already. I look forward to each debt that turns into $0 and the paid off total going up! We are really pushing to pay everything off (except the mortgage) in three years!