When I was a sophomore in college, I found my self in a pretty bad financial situation. Between paying for school and a budding credit card problem, I had found my self in $7000 worth of debt. My net worth was headed in the wrong direction and it needed to change 180 degrees. I statistically had one of the lower amounts of debt among my peers, but it still wasn’t good. If I kept doing what I was doing, I would find myself $20,000 in the hole just when I was ready to start off life, no thank you. I knew it was time for action.

At the time, I was working at McDonalds because in small town with a population of 6,400 people, there weren’t too many options. I had applied for a few different positions when I first got to college, but that’s all that was seemingly available. I had done the fast food thing once before, so I figured I could handle it. By this time, I was sick of working at McDonalds as well, and knew that getting more hours there was probably not the answer.

Instead I decided to start searching. I visited the city career center, I read the newspaper, I searched online, I went to the campus career center, I asked around, you name it, I did it. There were a surprising amount of employment options when I actually put a lot of effort into looking. I took a listing of everything worth applying for, and began filling out applications to the best of my ability.

I even applied for the most highly paid student position on campus which pays $16.35 an hour to do computer support. The application process was horrendous, but I actually did get that job! Unfortunately the job was only 11 hours a week, and wouldn’t quite be enough. I also accepted a tutoring job which only paid $6.35 an hour, but most of the time I just did my homework while I was there, because there was not much demand for tutoring. In my search I found a position at the campus newspaper which only paid $50 a month, but it sounded like really fun, so I did that too.

I picked up three new jobs my sophomore year, and did some more work after that. I was a participant in forensics activities during high school, so I worked at a number of debate and oral interpretation tournaments on weekends for some extra cash. Those work out to be about $100 a pop. Over Christmas break I went home and worked 40 hours a week at my summer job, and by the time May came around, that debt was completely paid off.

There were no sophisticated and complex mathematics behind my actions. Income minus outgo is what one has to pay toward their debts. As I gained in income, I didn’t let my expenses increase, so I was able to throw a ton of money at the debts that I had. Statistically when your income goes up, your expenses will increase proportionally as well. Don’t let this happen to you if you plan on paying off your debts any time soon.

The purpose of this story is not to boast, but rather to lead by example. Unlike a lot of bloggers preaching about money, I actually do all of the seemingly crazy things that I preach. You too can pay off a seemingly large amount of money in a short amount of time, but it takes hard work. Don’t be afraid of it, you’re not going to have to work like crazy forever, just do it as long as you need to. Get to it!

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