How To Pay Off Your Student Loans

Hello! Today, I’ve partnered with Lexington Law to give you tips and tricks on how to pay off your student loans. Fun fact about myself in case you didn’t know – I paid off $40,000 in student loans in just 7 months. I was in my early 20s when I accomplished this feat, and I did…

Michelle Schroeder-Gardner

Last Updated: July 18, 2018

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning if you decide to make a purchase via my links, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. See my disclosure for more info.

How To Pay Off Your Student LoansHello! Today, I’ve partnered with Lexington Law to give you tips and tricks on how to pay off your student loans.

Fun fact about myself in case you didn’t know – I paid off $40,000 in student loans in just 7 months.

I was in my early 20s when I accomplished this feat, and I did it without any parental help (nope, my parents didn’t help me pay for college!).

Figuring out how to pay off your student loans can lead to many benefits, such as:

  • You may experience less financial stress.
  • You may be able to use that money towards something more important and current in your life, such as being able to save for retirement.
  • Getting rid of your student loans may allow you to pursue other goals in life, such as traveling more or looking for a better job.

So, you’re probably wondering how YOU can pay off your student loans as well. Here are my tips.

 

Add up your total student loan debt.

Yes, this is the very first step I want you to take in order to finally pay off your student loans. I want you to add up the total amount of student loan debt that you have.

This is because the average person has no idea how much student loan debt they have! Usually, a person might have far more student loan debt than they originally thought.

When you total your student loans, do not just estimate how much student loan debt you have. Don’t just guesstimate and say that you think you have $20,000 in student loan debt.

You should actually pull up each student loan account that you have and add it all up, down to the penny.  You may even want to create an Excel spreadsheet with each of your accounts, as you most likely have several different student loan accounts. Simply by completing this task which may seem so minuscule, you will have a much more realistic view of exactly how much student loan debt that you are dealing with.

 

Make more money.

The very next thing I want you to do is to find ways to make more money.

Making extra money can allow you to pay off your students loans quickly because there is no limit to how much money you can make.

Finding ways to make extra money is how I was able to pay off my student loans so quickly!

Finding ways to make extra money is what allowed me to pay off my student loans more quickly. I was working a lot on top of my day job, but it allowed me to pay off my student loan debt so quickly that I don’t regret it at all.

A little bit of pain for lots of gain!

 

Save more money.

Whether you decide to focus more of your time on making more money or finding ways to cut back your budget, saving more money is important as well.

Although you may already have a budget, you should go through it line by line and see what you really do not need to be spending money on.

Even if all you can cut is $100 each month out of your budget, that is better than nothing. That’s $1,200 a year right there that can be put towards your student loan payments!

 

Pay off that debt!

In the end, there are tons of other ways to pay off your student loans as well.

If your student loan debt is hurting your credit score, then you may want to look into Lexington Law.

Lexington Law may be able to help you repair your credit so that your student loans aren’t hurting you in other areas of your life.

Lexington Law has been around for several years and has helped many, many people increase their credit score. They can help you remove items from your credit report such as items in collections, late payments, judgments, bankruptcies, foreclosures, and more, which can help you to increase your credit score.

Do you have student loan debt? If so, what are you doing to pay it off?


Filed under:

Michelle Schroeder-Gardner

Author: Michelle Schroeder-Gardner

Hey! I’m Michelle Schroeder-Gardner and I am the founder of Making Sense of Cents. I’m passionate about all things personal finance, side hustles, making extra money, and online businesses. I have been featured in major publications such as Forbes, CNBC, Time, and Business Insider. Learn more here.

Like this article?

Join the Conversation

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  1. The good thing about making money online as a side hustle is having the grand opportunity to make money potentially 24 hours a day from a blog alone. Bloggers & internet marketers are silent rockstars b/c we’re just as big as U.S. politicians.And when making money online as a future “side hustle millionaire,” you can easily pay off student loans, buy a new Mercedes-Benz a month and walk out the car dealership with change in your pocket, travel as you please, and no more worries about paying off student loans. The beauty of internet marketing and the [side hustle millionaire] mentality. Ahhh…. 🙂 🙂 🙂

  2. The two biggest things I did to help me pay off my loans more quickly was I 1. lived with my parents after college and 2. refinanced.

    Living with your parents may not sound very appealing to a lot of people – and worse still, I have heard of some parents actually charging their kids rent! I think that is crazy myself, but maybe it’s because they just want their kids to move out. Either way, if you can do it and your parents won’t charge you rent, I say do it, at least for a few years. That makes a huge difference!

    And refinancing, like I said. Doing so got me a lower monthly payment and a lower interest rate. I didn’t have any refinancing options for my federal loans, so I did went through a private lender.