How I Paid Off $155,000 of Debt in 16 Months

Seeing a six-figure debt balance after graduating can feel overwhelming, especially when you did everything “right.” That’s exactly how Arden felt when she realized she had over $155,000 in student loan debt. In this guest post, Arden shares how she paid off $155,000 of debt in just 16 months. She walks through the real numbers, the extra jobs she worked, the sacrifices she made, and what helped her stay motivated along the way. If you’re dealing with student loans or wondering whether it’s possible to pay off a large amount of debt faster than you ever thought possible, her story shows what it really takes, and what can make the biggest difference.

Not long ago, I found myself over $155,000 in student loan debt, all of it from graduate student loans. Over the next 16 months, I paid off every dollar. I didn’t do so through an inheritance or Liam Neeson type special set of skills, but I did take an unconventional approach.

In this post, I’ll go over exactly how I paid off my debt and remain debt-free to this day. 

Graduation day wasn’t the relief I expected

It was a joyful weekend. My parents had flown in, and it was finally time to breathe a sigh of relief that Physician Assistant school was over.

Or so I thought.

I had just dropped my parents at the airport and was back home sitting in front of my computer. Now that graduate school was over, I figured it was time to finally, for the first time ever, total my student loan debt. 

I was in shock. It was over $150,000, and I couldn’t believe it. It was worse than I thought.

Related articles:

• How We Paid Off $266,329.01 In 33 Months
• How Amanda Paid Off $133,763 In Debt in 43 Months

How I took on six figures of student loans

Before starting school, I had never had any debt before. It was probably for this reason I very naively took on 6-figures of student loans without so much as batting an eye.

I had worked incredibly hard to get accepted into a top 10 PA program, and I figured that I deserved to go to the best school possible. The tuition alone was over $100,000.

To me, it felt like Monopoly money. If every other PA does it, it can’t be so bad right? Wrong. 

Sitting there in my apartment, graduation cards scattered around, all of the sudden I didn’t feel like I had accomplished anything. Quite the opposite, I felt embarrassed. I felt like I had made a colossal mistake. How on earth was I going to pay all this off? 

I was surprised to learn that most people are exactly like me! They have no idea how much debt they’re in.

My starting salary and take-home pay

I was set to start work for an outpatient psychiatry clinic making $110,000 a year. That was a standard starting salary for a PA. After taxes I would be taking home about $75,000.

Which meant that even if I never spent a single dollar for the next 2 years, I would still be in debt.

Yikes. The future felt bleak. 

Deciding to pay off my debt as fast as possible

True to myself, when I had a problem, I hit the books and the spreadsheets. I read a handful of the top personal finance books, all of which told me to keep my debt for a decade plus and invest instead because my interest rate was lower than average market returns.

I mapped out my net worth projections over the next 20 years according to this plan, and to my horror, I was going to have a negative worth for 5 years! “Expert” advice or not, that just made zero sense to me. I was supposed to go on vacation and maybe get a nicer car or a nicer apartment, feelin’ great and livin’ large, all while being completely and totally broke? But I was supposed to tell myself I was building wealth that whole time? 

I just couldn’t accept that.

I didn’t want to bury my head in the sand and wait 5+ years to have anything to show for all the hard work I’d put in. Waiting 5 years to have a net worth of $1? That was just not for me. Not to mention the anxiety, stress, and emotional toll of carrying $150,000 of debt for years with monthly payments that matched the average mortgage.

So, I decided to go against all the personal finance pundits and take a completely opposite approach. Not only was I going to pay off my debt, I was going to do so with an enthusiasm and speed unknown to man!

Dead set on my new goal, I calculated how long it would take me to pay off all my debt if I cut my expenses to the bone and worked extra jobs.

According to the math, I could be debt free in less than 2.5 years if I worked an extra job and seriously cut my spending.

I figured I could do anything for 2 years. It didn’t feel like that long of a time, especially considering the payoff would be a lifetime of debt-free living. That tradeoff felt more than worth it. 

Quick tip from Making Sense of Cents: I recommend checking out Empower (formerly known as Personal Capital) if you are interested in gaining control of your financial situation. Empower allows you to aggregate your financial accounts so that you can easily see your financial situation. You can connect accounts such as your mortgage, bank accounts, credit card accounts, investment accounts, retirement accounts, and more, and it is FREE.

Creating a vision for a debt-free life

Before I started working extra jobs or cutting my expenses, I needed to get clear on the vision of life that I wanted. I knew I couldn’t just push myself through an enormous task like this, I needed something to pull me through.

And that something was a vivid, compelling, and totally irresistible vision for the life I wanted for myself. A life free of massive payments and endless anxiety around money. I sat down and wrote down exactly how I wanted my life to be and how I wanted to feel every day. I described it in extreme detail, and after I was done writing, I made a vision board based on what I’d written. I set it as my desktop background so that I’d see it every single day. If you want to make your own vision board, click here to access a free template!

Along with my vision board, I wanted a visual representation of my debt, too. I went ahead and made a paper chain for all of my debt. Each chain represents a dollar amount, and every time you make a payment, you cut off the chains. I hung them on my bedroom wall where I would see them every day. Cutting off those chains with every payment was so motivating. I could see my progress every time I looked at them. This exercise really helped me feel excited to pay off my debt. Here is a video tutorial for how to make your own paper chains of debt.

Along with my paper chains of debt, I also made my very own Game of Thrones themed debt payoff coloring sheet. Every time I made a payment, I colored in a space. The end of the sheet was the Iron Throne. To download my 75+ page booklet of debt payoff and savings coloring sheets, download my free Debt Freedom Starter Kit here.

The paper chains and coloring sheets might seem silly, but they really made a difference. They take advantage of a unique aspect of paying off debt as a goal. Unlike many other goals, there are tangible, regular, and measurable results along the way. Because of this, there are so many ways to see and celebrate your progress.

Coloring in my sheet and cutting off my chains were truly fun for me while I was paying off my debt. And looking at them every day kept me focused on why I was working so hard. 

Cutting my expenses

Now that I was set up with my vision for my amazing debt-free life, my hundred+ paper chains, and my coloring sheet, it was time for the real work! 

The next thing to do was to cut my expenses. I went through my bank statements line by line and highlighted everything I felt I could live without for 2 years. Because it was such a short amount of time, most of the things in my budget were on the chopping block. Surely, I could go without a vacation or a nicer apartment for only 2 years. Saying no to these items felt so much easier when I knew I could have them right back after I was done paying off my debt, and an even better version. Once I was out of debt, I would be able to afford an even nicer apartment, or an even nicer vacation because I wouldn’t have massive payments to worry about. When I thought about it like this, it didn’t seem like much of a sacrifice at all because I was trading up in the end. 

For every expense I cut, my debt-free date got closer. I wanted to spend as little time possible working overtime and missing weekends with friends, so I was motivated to reduce my spending as much as possible. Certain expenses just would not be worth extra hours at work to me.

I got really creative to reduce my bills. I called my car insurance provider and asked for a lower rate (which worked!) I switched from contact lenses to glasses, which saved me $800 a year. I stopped highlighting my hair and started cutting it at home in my bathroom mirror (results may vary). I started eating the free lunches provided at the hospital I worked at, too.

Again, these cuts weren’t exactly fun, but they weren’t that big of a deal. I could have a hack job haircut and glasses for 2 years if it meant a lifetime of no payments.

With every cut I made, the future life I wanted so badly moved closer and closer on my calendar.

Increasing my income

Now there’s only so much you can reduce your expenses. So, even more important to my debt payoff journey was increasing my income. I was so motivated by the idea of being debt-free for life that I was willing to work any (legal and ethical) job available. The first thing I did was try and get overtime at my current job. This is what I’d recommend as it’s often the highest paying option, especially if you can get an overtime differential. 

I was a new grad so I couldn’t ask for a raise, but I’d recommend that too if possible. Your salary compounds just like investments (and debt) so asking for a raise can have massive effects on your future income.  

I started working evenings and weekends, but because my employer was in the middle of switching software systems, there wasn’t much work for me yet. In the meantime, I went back to my high school roots and started babysitting again. I also posted flyers in my apartment building offering home cleaning and pet sitting services. Building management ripped them off the walls tout de suite, but not before I got a job! I was now going to be pet sitting an adorable dog while taking virtual patient appointments, effectively increasing my hourly income. 

I appreciated the opportunity to babysit and pet sit, but these only paid me $15-25 dollars an hour, far less than the $50/hour I could be making as a Physician Assistant. In between working those jobs, I was applying for other PA jobs like a madwoman. Indeed hated to see me coming. I was applying to probably 15+ jobs/week. Because I was a new graduate student and had no experience, I was not a very attractive candidate to most employers. This meant I had to work harder to find employment, but I was determined and knew I could do a good job.

In addition to applying to jobs online, I also reached out to my alma mater and asked if they had any teaching opportunities for the PA students, and they did! This went on to be one of my favorite jobs, as I absolutely love to teach.

Landing higher-paying PA work

After several months of trying and failing to find a second PA job that would fit with my already full-time schedule, I got an interview for a virtual psychiatry job that let you set your own hours. I was really excited, until the recruiter told me over the phone that they didn’t hire new graduates. I was actually able to convince the recruiter over the phone to make an exception and let me go on to a second-round interview. I was set on becoming debt-free, and if I had to push my way through, so be it. I ended up getting the job, and not long after I started, they offered to promote me to full-time work. This would be the first of many, many roadblocks on my debt-free journey that I had to work around. Don’t be discouraged if sometimes it seems like the odds aren’t working in your favor. Stay persistent and committed to your goal, and you’ll get there, just maybe not in the way you imagined.

Around this time, I finally heard back from a fellow alumnus of my PA program who I had been very annoyingly emailing asking for a job on his hospital consult team. They offered me an open position, but it was only for 1 day a week. I was really interested in the job, and it was better than nothing so I said yes. 

I had to wait a painful 3 months for my hospital credentialing to be approved, but soon enough, I was officially employed at my now 4th job. Shortly after I started, it turned out they needed me a lot more than 1 day a week. I was able to work multiple open bonus shifts in this position which really helped me increase my income and start making meaningful progress on my debt. 

A very demanding schedule

It was around this time that I noticed there were serious management issues at my first full-time job out of school, the one I had been working at for 6 months. They also cut my salary unexpectedly and then cut all my overtime. I knew that I needed to leave, so I started the job search yet again. Luckily, also through networking, I found another outpatient job that was a much better fit.

Applying for, interviewing, and starting what ended up being a total of 5 jobs in 7 months was beyond grueling. I had little experience as a PA, so I felt very insecure and had a lot to learn. I was incredibly nervous before each job and full of so much self-doubt that it felt crippling at times, but I pushed through. I realized the more insecurity I could handle, the more I could grow as a clinician and person. 

With each job, I surprised myself. I was able to learn quickly, and every job gave me great patient experience that helped me with the next job. I worked so much to pay off my debt, but it had the added bonus of making me a much better and more well-rounded Physician Assistant.

Once I was steadily working at all 4 jobs, my schedule was madness and objectively insane. I would wake up at 5:30am and drive to my office where I would take virtual appointments from 6am to 9am for job #1. Then, I would start seeing patients in the office for job #2 from 9am to 2pm. I would then hop on the bus or on the metro (or on a good day I got to borrow my boyfriend’s car) and make my way to my job in the emergency room at a local hospital. I would work that shift from 3pm until 11pm. Then I’d go home, pass out, dream of debt-free days, and do it all again. 

I was working about 90-100 hours a week depending on the week. During this time, I was able to pay off over $10,000 a month to my debt, which felt amazing.

Pushing through and staying motivated

One tip I’d recommend is to tell others about your debt-free journey! My coworkers were so supportive and would often help me by offering me their open shifts first. Take advantage of people’s willingness to help. Better still, some coworkers of mine started paying off their debt, too!

I worked every weekend for over a year. One time, I worked 63 days in a row, had one day off, and then worked another 50+ days in a row. Looking back, I am shocked at how much I was able to work. But to be honest I didn’t feel as tired or as miserable as you’d think. I actually liked working that much because I was getting regular positive reinforcement in the form of regular paychecks which went towards my debt. It felt so satisfying to see my loans shrink faster and faster the more I worked. 

In my opinion, burnout comes from working when you don’t want to, or when someone else or some outside circumstance is making you. But when you’re working extra hours because you want to, you don’t feel burnt out or resentful. In fact, because I paid off all my debt, it turned out to be a form of burnout prevention in my career. 

All told, I was only working 80+ hours for less than 12 months of my debt-free journey. It felt like the time flew by, and looking back it was such a short amount of time to sacrifice for a lifetime of gain. 

If you’re in debt and feeling ashamed, embarrassed, or wondering if you’ll ever get out, I’m here to tell you that I get it. I’ve been there. My debt once felt totally impossible, too. The truth is that it is possible to become debt-free, no matter how grim your finances may look now. The first step is not increasing your income or starting to coupon with fervor, but to change your beliefs. The moment you accept that debt freedom is possible and worth it, the results will inevitably follow.  

Author bio: Arden paid off $155,000 of student loan debt in 16 months by simplifying her life, working multiple jobs, and refusing to settle for financial stress as “normal.” Today, she runs She’s Financially Free, where she teaches women how to transform their money mindset and finally take control of their finances. Her work focuses on shifting beliefs, empowerment, and designing a life you love that’s free of money stress. Arden lives with her husband and daughter and is passionate about helping others experience the freedom she found. Download her Free Debt Freedom Starter Kit by clicking here.

What would your life look like if your debt was completely gone? How much debt do you have?

Recommended reading:

• How We Quit Our 9-5 Jobs and Built a $1,000,000+ Online Business to Reach Financial Freedom
• How I Retired At Age 30 with $500,000
• How Our Family of 5 Went from House Poor to Debt Free in 3 Years
• How I’ve Paid Off $29,000 In Debt By Living In a Van

The post How I Paid Off $155,000 of Debt in 16 Months appeared first on Making Sense Of Cents.