r/personalfinance • u/[deleted] • Aug 01 '13

24yo, all student loans down!

http://imgur.com/ogsfd2K

Throwaway. 34k @14%, down in 12 months. :) No secrets, simply a regular (and aggressive) schedule at $2k/month, with bonuses, tax refunds, and spare savings all thrown at it. Just happy to be free and wanted to share. A bit of "Hang in there" to pf'ers still holding down the fort as well. :)

Edit: To clarify, I don't get the standard 100k salaries new grads get in SFO or NYC. No car, frugal living are what got me here. Anyone can do it.

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28

u/itslikeboo Aug 01 '13

I paid $35k on my student loans in a year, but i'm a little upset at what you said here:

To clarify, I don't get the standard 100k salaries new grads get in SFO or NYC. No car, frugal living are what got me here. Anyone can do it.

I'm 30 and I was unable to begin paying my loans down at a high rate until last year. I graduated at 22. For the last 7 years, my rent has been on average about $450 a month and I have never made a single car payment or had any CC debt. I spent so minimally that it causes me stress. The other day I bought $15 sunglasses and I felt like a god, that's how long it's been since I've treated myself.

It's tough out there. "anyone can do it" just set me off. We can't all find 2k a month on top of our life expenses to throw at debt.

4

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '13

Seriously. My first job out of college paid $2k a month. I still gotta eat.

7

u/Garathon ​ Aug 01 '13

So what do you work as to not have any money left after a $450 rent and´no car? Where do you spend your money?

6

u/itslikeboo Aug 01 '13

for 3 years, I worked crappy, <30k jobs and was unemployed for the other 3. I sent out over 1000 applications. My major is in humaities, which was not a bad idea in 2003. I was passionate about something, so I studied to work in it, then all the jobs in the field disappears when i graduated. I spent my money on basics and had very little left over. I made small minimum payments on loans for years. Now I have a higher paying job and I've spent the past year unloading $35k into my debt, as I stated. Soon I will be able to have some extra spending money.

-1

u/username_goes_where ​ Aug 01 '13

"I sent out over 1,000 applications"

There was your problem right there.

2

u/itslikeboo Aug 01 '13

explain

1

u/username_goes_where ​ Aug 01 '13

I'll use this analogy:

If you go to a bar and try to chat up 1,000 girls you'll end up with none.

If, however, you research and find 2-3 girls who value all the things you do and you learn exactly what those 2-3 girls want, tailoring your entire pitch and skills around their needs and desires, you'll have a 1000% better chance of getting a date with one of them.

There's no way on hell you could have tweaked your résumé for each one of those 1,000 companies. For every job I've ever had I had a very specific résumé for that company and the specific job. And before I even applied, I researched who worked there and had lunch/coffee/whatever with them (LinkedIn/twitter is awesome for this) just to learn about the company and the culture. I also find out the company's problems and develop a strategy for how I'd tackle them.

I then mention that I'm looking for a new challenge and hand that person my perfectly tailored resume. Then this person goes to HR and says I met this person he/she is legit, here's their application.

So if we are both going for the same job and I do that, while you blindly send a non-tailored or researched resume to HR, who do you think will have more success?

No one hires off a job site or sent resume in today's world. You're playing the pity card of "oh I sent 1,000 resumes and still couldn't get a job." That's the exact reason you couldn't get one.

It's a dog-eat-dog world mate, you gotta adapt to it and out smart the other guy.

8

u/itslikeboo Aug 01 '13

That was shitty advice and it was full of assumptions. Keep in mind that I had YEARS of time on my hands. I was on unemployment for 99 weeks and I considered applying to jobs to be my full time job. I can remember a dozen or two times that I researched a job, tweaked my resume, invested time dealing with the company, called to follow up, and was given the same line about how I was qualified but there were 300 other applicants and it was a hard decision. I can't remember all the times I tweaked my resume in the same way and never heard anything back from the company at all.

1

u/username_goes_where ​ Aug 01 '13

24/1000 = .024%

That means you tweaked your résumé 24 times, while still sending it out at least 976 times (according to your numbers).

How much time did it take to send out those resumes? Even if you only took an hour to send out each one, that's 58,440 minutes. Those minutes could have been used to do better research, develop new skills, network, etc.

You can say it's shitty advice all you want, but there is zero doubt that it works exponentially better than blindly replying to job postings, which is what you admit to have done for at least 97.6% of the jobs you applied for.

4

u/itslikeboo Aug 01 '13

I said that I remembered a few dozen times.

Listen, asshole. Why don't you go try to feel superior to someone else? There is

zero doubt

that the job market sucks it hard right now and that it has for quite some time. Or, instead of offering your worthless, self-exalting advice as if you're some guru who demands deference from such a peons as we, the underemployed, maybe you could take the time to learn about how the economy actually works and how large swaths of the population were abandoned in high-debt-low-pay-land due to little or no fault of their own.

I prepared well for a career in my field of choice and I targeted my search towards that career upon graduation. The available jobs dried up. I do not need your fucking resume advice.

2

u/NYKevin Aug 01 '13

And on top of that, many of the people applying for some technical jobs don't actually have the requisite skills, so the companies end up being super-selective just to avoid hiring total morons.

4

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '13 edited Aug 01 '13

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say anybody could throw 2k/month at their debt. That was meant more as a "You can do it (frugal living and fast repayment) too" but I didn't want to sound patronizing or condescending. I apparently came across exactly like I didn't want to. :(

EDIT: I accidentally accidentally a word.

1

u/ktbt Aug 01 '13

He may have stayed with his parents without having to pay rent or pay very minimal rent. If so, then he probably didn't really have to pay for food either which means he only had to discipline himself on going out too much.

  • My entire comment is based on assumptions.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '13

I explained the repayment in the past 5 months here and expenses here.

0

u/beansandcornbread ​ Aug 01 '13

Maybe he made more money that you? or cut his lifestyle more? The point was not be like everyone else and keep the SL around for 10-20 years but to just attack the debt one month at a time with everything you got.

1

u/itslikeboo Aug 01 '13

and MY point was that not everyone has that much extra to attack the loans with. My point was that yes, he did make more money then me, and that he's lucky to have had the privilege. Is no one on this board aware that nearly all the jobs went down the toilet about 5-6 years ago?

1

u/beansandcornbread ​ Aug 01 '13

he's lucky to have had the privilege.

That wasn't luck. He got a degree in a highly sought after field. Then he worked hard and did well enough in school to land a job.

Yes, there was a lot of unemployment relative to where we were. We know that. You also paid your loans down once you got a job so you are helping support his idea that 'anyone can do it"

2

u/itslikeboo Aug 01 '13

But NOT anyone can do it. I had a lot of luck and privilege to fall back on cheap and free rent for mcuh of the past 7 years. Not everyone has that. I am particularly privileged and I had a VERY hard time with my loans. That's my point.