I’M DEBT FREE!!!

(Except my mortgage of course 👀)

Let me start off by saying that I’m not Dave Ramsey’s biggest fan. His war against debt can sometimes lead to detrimental decisions if not taken with a grain of salt. That said, I believe his way does more good than harm. I listened to his podcast quite a bit in the early stages of my financial journey, and it taught me a lot. The principles of avoiding debt, building an emergency fund, saving for retirement, and spending intentionally along the way are all very sound.

In part due Ramsey (among many others), I am now officially out of debt, and it feels great! Sure, I could have done it sooner had I not maxed out all my retirement options in 2024 (not the Ramsey way), but it felt like the right move to make, and I don’t regret it. More than anything, I don’t regret putting my financial health ahead of “living my best life.” The tough decisions I made, and continue to make, will lead towards me living my best future.

I paid off almost $80,000 worth of debt in 18 months while maxing out my 401K, Roth IRA, and HSA. Also, during this time, I attended 5 weddings (2 out of town), an international bachelor party, and hopped on several domestic flights to visit family. We’ll get into my big picture money story in a future post; but on this one I’d like to show the method that helped me get out of debt while still spending on my core values.

This isn’t intended to be a brag post (maybe a little 👀), instead I hope this helps motivate you to take the next step towards financial freedom!

Here’s how it went down!

Money suddenly got really tight.

I had bought my co-op a few months prior, and the previous month decided to finance a used vehicle from a dealership. All of a sudden, I was getting emails about all these student loans I was unaware of (more on that in a future post), on top of the ones I actually was aware of! Subpar tracking of my expenses and never following a budget came back to bite me pretty hard!

I picked my head out of the sand and took a financial inventory. It was time to list out all my debts:

*Note: Navient has apparently gotten into a lot of trouble due to bad practices in the past couple years. 😂 Read more about it here. Because of this, I’m not able to log into my old account and gather the exact dollar amount I owed between the 12 loans. However, I do distinctly remember it was 12 because I had a fleeting thought that one more student loan would be unlucky. 🤪

The absolute first thing I did when I put this together was freak the %&$# out. How in the holy hell am I still in this much student loan debt, and how am I going to get out of it? After I took some time to decompress and calm down, I decided to come up with a plan.

The very next thing I did was research student loan consolidation companies and requested quotes. Man, the emails came flying in! I went with the one offering the lowest fees and lowest rate at the time. After going through the process, I decided to take my mortgage off this list, since that wasn’t going to be the priority for quite some time.

Towards the end of September, it looked like this:

Now, at the time I had around $7k in savings. It was originally intended for updating a few things around my new place. I chose to scrap those plans and follow good ol’ Dave’s advice. I paid off that Trellis loan towards the end of September to get the smallest (and highest interest) loan out of my hair and had a little over $1,000 in cash to my name. 😬

My company at the time didn’t offer a match to the 401K, and the investment firm was not among the low-cost ones. I went full on Ramsey and put everything I had towards getting out of debt!

After filling out a few different budgets, it looked like I only had a few hundred bucks a month that I could allocate towards paying down debt. This plan was going to move too slow; this debt burden was keeping me up at night! I needed to do something else… something extra.

I decided to become a ride-share app driver on weekends outside of my normal working hours. Looking back… probably not my best decision. At the time, though, I needed money now to aggressively pay down this debt as soon as I could. If nothing else, it would help me sleep at night knowing that I’m doing everything in my power to get the personal finance ship righted.

After getting signed up and driving people around, it looked like I could put at least $2k per month towards the debt. Let’s tackle the car loan first! (This one gets read from bottom to top)

I was finally making headway. However, the fact that I only had $1,000 cushion at all times was giving me a ton of anxiety. If I had gotten a couple flat tires on my car, it would completely disrupt the plan.

I knew I had a big Christmas bonus coming my way from the 9-5, so the plan was to put some of it towards debt, and some of it towards extra savings.

Guess what!?! My bonus was not as high as I was anticipating. 😶 I felt like a real Clark Griswald in that moment. 😂 Turned out the ride-share app had extra incentives for driving around the holidays, of which I took full advantage while using vacation days. I put some in savings and kept pushing myself to get better skills at my 9-5 while also making more $ from the side gig.

In the beginning of February, a headhunter reached out to me. After months of listening to personal finance podcasts, I decided to at least hear them out. It was for a sales position very similar to my current one, but a different sector altogether! I would have to learn a whole new set of skills, new product line, as well as a whole new industry! Plus, it was a base salary/commission type job, so the pay would be variable. 😬

I did some research on the company, and they were among the top in the industry. The pay and benefits being offered were significant compared to where I currently was, so I figured what the hell? I went through the interview process and was offered the position.

I put in two weeks’ notice with my company at the time (middle of Feb) because it felt like the right thing to do. Unfortunately, I got shown the door immediately. While it gave me more time to drive for the ride-share app, I still would have been in a heap of trouble had I not put a little extra into savings.

Oh well, on to the next adventure!

This was it! New career, new financial plan, no more ride-share app, new me!

Admittedly, the new job was not what I expected at all. There were new levels of stress I hadn’t combatted in the past, but also it was a lot more fun! Despite the highs and the lows, I was going to stick to my new financial plan come hell or high water!

Here are the changes I made in the beginning:

• 20% of income towards 401K
• Put $600 per month in HYSA to max out Roth IRA by December
• Put $100 per month in separate HYSA called emergency fund
• Started HSA account, put $500 per month towards it
• $3,000 minimum extra monthly payments towards debt
• Anything extra would go into savings
• Sell this stupid car that I’ve had for less than a year (new job came with company vehicle 😁)

Here’s how it played out (this one is read from top to bottom):

Something I hadn’t thought about at the time was that starting a new job means your first paycheck might not be till the next pay cycle and potentially just be a partial paycheck depending on what day you start. Luckily, I was able to scrape by with what I had, but it’s something to think about before job hopping.

So obviously up till May, I was completely focused on paying down the car loan debt first. With the stresses that come with a new job, I hadn’t been doing all I could to sell my personal vehicle yet. Eventually a friend of mine mentioned he would buy it from me, and I sold it to him at the fair market price of $18,500. We both did our due diligence on this; it legitimately was what KBB and other sources said the car was worth.

I’ll save you the hassle of scrolling up. I put $5,000 down, financed $21,740, meaning I paid a total of $26,740. Actually, I paid even more than that if you include the interest I was paying from financing 😬. So, I legitimately lost (more than) $8,240 on this thing in less than a year! It was 3 years old when I bought the damn thing, I had no idea I was getting ripped off that bad. Word to the wise: Stop buying cars at dealerships!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yea! I was totally locked in on getting out of debt!

May 2024: Sold the car, paid off the car loan, put the extra directly towards the next debt in line (the AES debt had a higher interest rate).

July 2024: I had made tremendous strides thus far and had enough in savings for the back-to-back international bachelor party/out of state wedding trip (different people) I was planning on attending. Except… I planned a little too conservatively. 😬 A number of last-minute unexpected expenses came up leading up to the trips, which is kind of what happens with vacations in general.

Whoops! Lessons learned! I reached into my Roth bucket to cover my expenses for now and didn’t put the full $3,000 towards debt. I’ll do my best to catch up moving forward.

August 2024: Big Ass Pay Day! 🥳🎉🎊 Sometimes this commission thing is pretty sweet! I took $500 and spent it on a computer for this dumb little blog idea I had. 👀

Some of it went towards emergency savings, the rest went directly towards debt. Right back on track!

September 2024: Ah crap, I’m not on track to max out my Roth bucket by the end of the year. Technically I have till the following Tax Day to max it out, but the goal was to make contributions by December.

I decided to add a little extra to my Roth bucket and put a little less towards debt.

End of November 2024: Alright, I need to prioritize Roth, I’ll worry about this debt after I max out the Roth IRA and live skinny as hell for a little while. (Can you tell that I’ve been immersing myself with personal finance content for over a year?) 🤪

Mid December 2024: You know what? Roth is maxed out. HSA is maxed out. 401K just maxed out. My next paycheck will not have any contributions towards those things. I can continue to live skinny for a bit. Let’s get rid of this stupid AES debt! 😁

AES debt is done! The last and final monster to vanquish is this Aidvantage debt! 😈

Queue the Mortal Combat soundtrack with Scorpion yelling “Get Over Here!”

—If you didn’t get that reference, you are much cooler than me—

Beginning of January: Hell yea! Time to get aggressive!

February: Ah shit, payments got a little goofy after being aggressive.

Beginning of March: Working the numbers… 🧐. You know… if I put $4K in right now, live real skinny for a month, I can technically pay this thing off in full 3/14 with enough cushion if anything were to happen…

AND THAT’S EXACLTY WHAT I DID! 😎

As of 3/14/25, I am officially debt free! 🥳 This thing is still showing processing, but I can’t stop checking to see when it will be official. 😂

I’m so glad you asked! Its time bolster my emergency fund and bucket funds!

Oh, was I supposed to celebrate? I AM CELEBRATING! 🥳 Why else would I make a post like this? 🤪😂

No in all honesty, that’s what the bucket funds are for! I’m going to plan an overseas solo trip, but I’d like to plan it out instead of flying somewhere on whim. 🤓 I’m also not fully comfortable with where my emergency funds are at. If something were to happen with my current job, I’d likely be forced to take a position somewhere that I don’t enjoy. 😬

Here’s where I’m at:

• Roughly 2.5 months fixed costs in emergency fund
• Bucket fund totaling a measly $1,850
• One month cushion in my checking account

Where I want to be:

• Full 9 months fixed costs in emergency fund
• Roth IRA funds sitting in HYSA waiting for January 1st to hit to max out immediately
• Slowly contribute towards other bucket fund items (vacations, planned events for the next year, next vehicle, things about to break in my co-op 😂, etc.)
• Start a taxable brokerage investment account while still maxing out retirement options (will shift investment strategy after reaching Coast FI)

Sound a little bold? Hell, it might be. But now that I’m debt free, I have all this wiggle room to make changes as I go along! 😁 I’m also considering a house hack in the future 🤔, but not until I have my emergency funds stocked up.

I’m also putting the Roth IRA among my top priorities. Current plan is to have 2025 contributions maxed out by August and have 2026 contributions maxed out by Feb-March 2026. By January 2027 I should be ready to max it out right off the top! 😁 Are unexpected financial events going to find me? Of course they are, and I’ll adjust as life comes at me!

I hope this little 18-month journey of mine didn’t come across as preachy or arrogant. I truly don’t think the path I took was right for everyone, maybe even not for me! 🤪

Instead, I do hope it inspires you to make a small change today to better your life in the future. Maybe you aren’t in a position to max out your 401k, and that’s ok! Would you consider putting in 16% instead of 15%? That little extra will compound and give your future more options!

Hit me up with your small or big financial wins! Always love to hear them!

Stay classy Solos! ✌️