I have to admit, over the last 2 months, I had seriously considered stopping payments on my student loans. I can make excuses all night long but at the end of the day, I was simply losing the motivation to pay off my debt.

Since I’m on the REPAYE plan and just graduated last year while making almost no income, I have $0 per month minimum payment for the next 12 months.

This means I am not obligated to make payments until next year. While this is good to get my bearings together, I am still accruing interest during this period so it’s not like I can just forget about my six-figure debt for a whole year.

At first, I was marching on, taking advantage of the $0 minimum payment to make extra payments only to one loan at a time. However, I hit a couple of roadblocks about 2 months ago.

I had quite a bit of life events going on the past 2 months, the career-related ones being my full-time contract position ended abruptly, and I had to quit my part-time job to start my new full-time job.

So I had an unstable income for these 2 months and while I was lucky enough to be able to land a job within 2 months, unemployment scared me out of my wits.

I was scared of not having enough saved up. So I chose not to make any loan payments for the past 2 months (my March and April debt statements actually show my loan increasing because I wasn’t making payments).




I was further fueled by a simple question by my coworker, “Avery, you own a home right?” which got me feeling embarrassed that no, not only did I not own a home, I was living at home with my parents.

That comment made me realize that if I continued my focus only on paying my loans, I would not be able to purchase a home for at least the next 2 or 3 years (and that is already based on a very aggressive estimate).

So I spent the majority of April debating whether I should save up this year for a down-payment on a home while I still have my $0 minimum payment for the year or if I should continue tackling my loans aggressively.

After many nights of internal debate, I finally made up my mind. I was certain that before I was ready to save up for a home or focus on retirement savings, I wanted to aggressively tackle my debt in 2018. These were the 3 things I did to help me get back on course to paying off my student loan.

1.  I read a lot of personal finance books

A good friend of mine gave me my first introduction to personal finance a year ago when she recommended the book Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.

It completely spurred my personal finance addiction and I’ve never looked back since. It’s one of the most popular personal finance books out there and I truly believe the hype around this book is well-deserved.

I completely attribute this book to changing my attitude towards personal finance and money management. It introduced me to the concept of paying myself first among many other revolutionary thoughts that completely changed my money mindset.

If you have not read it, I highly recommend this book as an introduction to personal finance. 




This time around, I was looking inspiration to get my motivation back and the book that really turned things around for me was The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley and William Danko.

Reading this book made me re-evaluate what it means to live well. In this book, Stanley and Danko outline their observations that the millionaires live below their means and continue to live frugally even as a millionaire. It is how they built their nest and continue to live well into the future. 

On the other hand, those with the fancy cars, mansions, and vacation homes are often struggling to make ends meet because they are too obsessed with keeping up appearances.

It made me realize I shouldn’t care what others think about me living at home or living like I’m still a broke college student when I now have a full-time job. I consider living at home one of the biggest reasons why I was able to pay off $50,000 debt so far so I will continue to do so.

2.  I watched The Dave Ramsey Show

I binge watched The Dave Ramsey Show on youtube where he basically tells off anyone who even thinks about using their money for anything else but paying their debt.

Every time Dave answers a caller’s question, I imagined he was talking to me instead and chastising me for not paying off my debt aggressively enough. In fact, he’s told off many callers who wanted to save up for a house or put money into savings before paying off their loan.

While I don’t follow all his teachings–for example, I use the debt avalanche instead of the debt snowball method he recommends and I contribute to my 401k even while in debt–I generally agree with his view that you can never be free with debt looming over your head.

I also came across Budget Girl’s youtube channel who guested on Dave Ramsey’s show after paying off $33,000 student debt in 3 years on ~$30,000 income!

I’ve since binge-watched her youtube channel and she is possibly my favorite youtuber as of this moment. It’s super motivating to watch her start her debt repayment journey even when she was only making $26,000/year salary her first year.

3.  I made smaller goals

After pumping myself up with personal finance books and videos, my last task was to put all my newly found motivation into action. This is where smaller goals come into play.

At the beginning of May, my loan stood at $125,000 which was such a daunting amount when I look at it. So I decided to break it down into smaller goals. I decided my first goal was to finish paying off my highest interest rate loan which had ~$7600 balance left on it.

Well, I did it. As of my May Debt Progress report, I accomplished this goal and finished off the loan with $7,600 balance. The funny thing was I didn’t think this goal was doable but I was just putting it out there as a challenge to myself. Based on this success, I have to say, small goals really do work!

I hope that if you find yourself losing the motivation to aggressively pay off your loans, you can use these tips to help you get your motivation back. Doing these three things really brought back my drive to tackle my loans head on and I hope it will do the same for you.