Paying off $40,000 in Debt by Conquering Emotional Spending
Conquering emotional spending resulted in my ability to pay off $40,000 in student loan debt and reach my goal for 2019. I’ve had student loan debt for over 15 years. This week, we made our final payment. This was my big goal for this year and we met it a few weeks earlier than expected! In 2019, I just really wanted to focus on paying off my student loan debt. I was really motivated to do it because last year we were in a car accident and the damage was enough to pay off my husband’s student loans.
That little spark of freedom really motivated me. My debt was 10X what we had paid off for his. So we agreed we would work together to pay off the 40K left in my student loan debt in year.
Going to grad school had a huge ROI for me so I never regretted the investment. But being free of debt seemed like a good choice for our family. The first step we took was we decided to stop contributing to our 401’s. This is not something I would recommend for folks but for us, this was the right time for us to do it. One of the reasons I think I was able to really commit to this goal is that I got very clear on my WHY.
I felt burdened by the debt
I felt beholden to my job
I wanted to feel more financial freedom
I wanted to start saving for the future instead of paying off the past
As we started paying this off my mindset about money really changed I got very interested in learning about the FIRE movement and thinking about what would I need to be financially independent. Part of the reason I was not able to look at doing this so seriously in the past is that spending money and shopping are big buffers for me.
Feeling bad? Do some shopping. Bored? Browse the internet and fill the cart. Working on managing my emotions made it easier for me to concentrate on my long term goals. I started to shift my mindset from self-care as being a way to “treat my self” to self-care looking more like self-discipline towards my bigger goals.
Now I see money more as a tool and I think about the ROI for almost all of my purchases. I’ve started to think about quality over quantity, cost-per-use, and whether something I’m purchasing is going to bring more to my life than it would cost. I look forward to seeing how my money mindset continues to shifts and grow into the next year as I set my goal to save or invest at least 100K.
