Fairy Tales, or How I Paid $200,000+ in Student Loan Debt Off In 5 Years

I believe in fairy tales.  I don't believe in the version fed to my generation of women, who were taught that a fairy tale was Richard Gere pulling up to my dingy apartment in a fancy limo and financing my dreams for the rest of my life.  What about the "happily ever after" part?  Surely Julia Roberts died of boredom. 

My life is driven by setting relatively arbitrary goals and working towards them.  It's how I slay the dragons in my mind that constantly seek a reason to stay in bed in the morning.  And I like to choose the hard goals, the ones most people would never consider doing, and that require me to rethink or recreate my day-to-day life.  It's the "newness" of things that keep me going.  My "happily ever after" requires me to have an ever-evolving existence that most people can't keep up with or don't want to keep up with.  It's not the goals themselves that matter, as I was reminded recently of something Bruce Lee once said, "a goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at."  My way of life can be a lonely existence because humans, generally speaking, are complacent creatures.

A good friend of mine recently emailed me to see how I was doing.  I told him about an unexpectedly positive but complicated development in my life, one that has brought me out of plodding slowly and steadily towards the end of this chapter, and back into actively thinking about what this trip means to me, why I am going, and what I really want out of life.  His response to me was:

[A]ll magic is work in progress. The idea of magic happening out of the thin air is an urban (or medieval) legend. The key thing is to have/identify the ingredients/raw material/resources/desire/etc., and take actionable steps to make your magic happen.
But you are no stranger to this are you. Many would say you live a magical life. 

Most people who think I live a magical life they tell me, with a wistful look in their eyes, about how jealous they are of whatever it is I'm doing at the time.  The fact is, if they really wanted it, they would do it.  They like the idea of my fairy tale, but it's not what they really want.  Sometimes, it's because they have different priorities, other times, it's because they choose to believe it is simply too hard.  A life less ordinary isn't an easy one.  What they don't see is how hard I work towards my fairy tale and the actionable steps I take to make it happen.  They don't see the planning, the setbacks, the plan B/C/D/E, the tears of frustration, the guilt when I stray from whatever plan I've made, the uncertainty of each decision, and all of the things that come with daring to think outside the box.  They don't understand the fluid nature of the goals, and that at the end of the day, it's all a form of escapism. 

What do I want out of life?  Maybe this is it.  Maybe this is the human condition, or at least my human condition, to be always searching for that next new thing.  I aim for the ridiculous because my personality and nature push me to do so.  But the thing I ground myself in every day is that I cannot live for some hypothetical tomorrow and blindingly fling myself towards an idea I had long ago if circumstances change.  The beauty of life is that it is unexpected, and how we synthesize changes in circumstances with our goals becomes incredibly important.  Do we compromise one dream for another?  Do we fight to have it all?  I choose not to live in terms of mutual exclusion.  I will take as much of it as I can until the circumstances force me to choose, or the choice is taken away from me. 

But I digress.  This post was really supposed to be how I paid off $200,000+ in student loans in five years. 

I made a promise to myself that when I sold my soul to BigLaw in the face of a deteriorating economy, I would only sell my soul for 5 years or until my student loans were at a "manageable" level, whichever came first.  I thought for a long time that it would be much earlier, especially as the toll of working in BigLaw became almost unbearable.  I spent some time job searching on the West Coast as my post-BigLaw plan A, and had good prospects at the Alaska AG's office which would have allowed me to take maybe 6 months off to do a bike tour.  That didn't seem like enough.  To leave law only to come back didn't feel right.  And it would have left me still saddled with debt.  So in January 2012, I did a budget to see what it would take to be able to take a year off to travel, maybe by bike, maybe by other means.  And that's when I realized that I could actually finish paying them off.  The timing of February 2013 was somewhat random, chosen only by the responsible part of me that recognizes that law will be a good fallback and if I want to waive into other jurisdictions, I needed my last day at the office to be February 5, 2013 or later to qualify for 5 years of practice.  

What were the actionable steps?

• I made a conscious decision in law school to keep open the possibility of working for one of the big law firms.  I knew I wanted to do the "do gooder" work, but I accepted the reality of my decision to attend law school.  I did well, I studied, I got a summer associate position, and I accepted the job offer.  I promised myself five years or when the loans were low enough to get out.
• I also made a conscious decision never to let myself live like I was making top dollar.  For example, I never bought a car and relied on my bicycle to commute.  I shopped for clothes at the Thrift Store.  The only splurges I made were for travel that I knew I would not be able to afford later and I moved into a nicer apartment.  For the most part, I paid double or triple my minimum student loan payments each month, focusing on the loans that had the highest interest rates.  It's slow going at first, but once you finally get into your principal, it goes more quickly.
• When the end was near, I created a budget spreadsheet to see how long it would take to pay off my student loans if I really cracked down on my finances.  Once I saw I was about a year away, I was mentally able to focus and pare down everything that was unnecessary.  I made an end goal of a bike trip to keep me motivated and on the path of minimalism.  At this point, over 50% of my pay was going into my student loans.
• I created a simple spreadsheet into which I forced myself to enter all of my expenditures in real time, with formulas that would automatically recalculate how much money I had left to spend under my budget.  My budget was ruthless.  
• I moved to a cheaper apartment with a friend rather than renting a one-bedroom in a trendy part of town.  We kept utilities low by using space heaters and rarely turning on the heat or air conditioner.
• I cooked all my lunches and making all my meals from scratch.  I often hunted around the break room for leftovers from luncheon meetings and so long as no one else wanted them, I would take enough for several meals.  I stopped shopping at Whole Foods and buying nice wine and made all my meals by couponing and shopping only the sales items.  I even dabbled in dumpster diving for a bit.  I got my grocery budget down to $100 a month.
• I made a rule that I could not go out to eat unless it was comped from working overtime or with friends.  Even then, I usually only ordered an appetizer or a drink and never a full meal.
• I made sure to have a "fun" budget and a "restaurant" budget to make sure I kept my sanity, but I kept them really small.
• I quit my gym and found other ways to maintain my fitness goals using the free gym at my office.
• I learned how to say "no" to weekend trips I normally would have taken. 
• If I overspent in one area, I would have to take it from another or sell something to compensate.  I ended up selling almost everything I owned anyway, but this helped avoid any impulse purchases.

If I had not decided to do this trip, I would never have stuck to my budget and I would not be just one paycheck away from being free and clear.  It could be argued that the trip was just a means to the earlier promise I made to myself.  It gave me the mental fortitude to stay the course.  And that's how I paid off all my student loans in five years.