She Paid Off $17,000 Worth Of Student Loan Debt In Six Months While Working A Normal Job

In just six months, TikToker Gabrielle (@gabrielle.lyn1) was able to pay off $17,000 worth of student loan debt while working a normal job and earning $27 an hour as a registered nurse. Now, she's talking about how she managed to pull that off.

"I took out $17,000 worth of student loans when I was 19 years old," she explained.

"I was in my last year of college. I was going to a private school, and I had used all the money that I had saved on the prior three years, so I took out the $17,000 the last year when they tried to kick me out because I couldn't pay for it."

She also didn't have anyone to help her co-sign a loan, so she took out a $17,000 loan on her own with a fluctuating interest rate. For the last seven years, she has been paying $200 a month to try to cover the interest. Once in a while, she would pay extra money if she had any.

"So, in August of this year, I opened up the loan, expecting it to be like $10,000 or something," said Gabrielle. "My idiot self just thought that it would have went down. The loan had only gone down a very, very small amount."

She went to several banks to have them take a look at the loan. Every single one of them agreed that it was the worst loan she could have taken out and that the loan company was terrible. At one point, the loan interest rate was 10.7%.

She decided to focus on paying it off, so for six months straight, she did not spend a single dollar on anything that was not a necessity.

There was one period when she worked for 11 days in a row and had one day off. After that, she worked another 14 days in a row. When she finally finished paying off the loan, she booked a trip and spent a few days at the beach.

She is still working on paying off some other student loans, but at least she got the worst one out of the way. Her advice is to look at your loans and determine which one has the worst interest rate because that's the one costing you the most money.

Oleksandr - stock.adobe.com - illustrative purposes only

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She added that you should break down how much the interest rate is costing you per day.

In the comments section, many TikTok users shared their own stories about paying off large amounts of debt.

"I paid off $40k in four months working an extra full-time job. Spent $0 on nails, hair, shopping. Only bought food, gas, and paid my mortgage and utilities. Sacrifice, suffer, and overcome!!!!" exclaimed one user.

"I did $20k in 3.5 months. Worked 48 hours a week. One job full-time, and picked up a part-time job on Saturdays and any off days, and used PTO for two weeks, and worked that part-time job on those off days. I did not spend money on anything besides food. I meal prepped every meal and canceled every subscription. It's doable. Those small purchases add up so fast," commented another.

"I had a $36k loan with a variable rate, and it got up to 11%, like, why do they let kids get these loans? Anyway, I paid that off so fast, like two years. I was making $16 an hour, but it was hard," added a third.