I’ll never forget one of our first “in-home” dates where Zach and I spent an evening drinking wine and listing out all the places we wanted to travel around the world.
We both love traveling and adventuring (hence the blog) and knew that our future would include a lot of it. Four years later and we have been traveling the world together for short amounts and long amounts of time.
Both of us have incredibly similar personalities. We live more in the “YOLO” perspective than the other side. Our life mottos closely resonating with: “nothing in life is guaranteed, who knows how long we’ll be on the planet, let’s live it up.”
This mindset comes with a lot of pros and cons.
On the plus side, we dive into opportunities left and right and don’t hold ourselves back due to fear or money or timelines.
On the down side, we don’t have a super robust plan in place for retirement and haven’t prioritized paying off all of our debt like many others with our income might do.
The great thing about life is, there’s no formula. We all choose to live differently and our lifestyle brings us a ton of joy with a sprinkling of stress here and there.
Both of us are college grads (Zach has a MPA as well) with fairly significant student loan debt. This isn’t unfamiliar to the average millennial. We’ve paid off $20,000+ together in the last couple years even with unpredictable incomes, lots of travel, and major unexpected bills and life circumstances.
I owe a lot of that to refinancing our loans and sticking to our monthly payments, as well as increasing our income month after month.
A couple years ago I started doing calculations using the various tools with the federal programs. Income Based Repayment was a fantastic option as I was getting my feet wet professionally and then I realized how much over the years I would be paying in interest alone. I would pay a little more every month, but I just kept wanting it to go away forever.
Debt is different to everyone. Some people aren’t phased by it. Some people live to demolish it.
I’m somewhere in the middle.
At one point I went down the rabbit hole of refinancing student loans to finally just say goodbye to it for good and ended up choosing Credible as our provider.
There are terrific programs out there, but this one’s user-friendly website and fantastic customer service was a huge selling point. So both Zach and I took our $80,000+ student loan debt and refinanced to ensure a lower interest rate and faster payoff. Together, we pay a pretty hefty monthly bill (which is of course optional), but have watched the amount owed decrease significantly over time, which is incredibly satisfying. We still have a ways to go, but it’s a real plan that gets us out of debt quicker so we can travel without as many limitations and budget constraints.
We still struggle to watch the significant amount of our income go towards this debt (and not towards another flight, ha), but with some of our bigger travel + life goals in place, it makes sense for us to get this over with once and for all.
If you’re in a similar boat and want to tackle your student loan debt, I cannot recommend Credible enough. If you choose the Credible route, they will give you $100 if you sign up using this link!
Be sure to drop us a note if you choose (or have chosen) to refinance; we want to cheer you on!