Amanda Page, an assistant professor teaching English and humanities at Mount Carmel College of Nursing in Columbus, Ohio, has managed to repay her student loan debt after 10 years and 14 months. She earned her master's degree in fine arts at the University of Alabama.
She left school with $47,554 in federal student loans, a combination of the cost of her graduate and undergraduate studies. Before she defended her thesis, she consolidated her loans and signed up for the Department of Education's graduated repayment plan, which helped lower her initial payment amount.
10 years after, Page realized that she has paid off less than $1,000 of her total balance. This led her to get serious about her student loan debt.
The Mount Carmel College assistant professor started a blog named Dream Beyond Debt. This is in order to keep track of her progress. She was able to pay off the rest of her debt after just 14 months of hard work.
Speaking to USA Today College, Amanda Page admitted that the first thing she did was to call her lender and explain the payments to her. Afterwards, she decided to go for making "monster payments."
She also started to take on more extra work like taking up temporary office jobs when her schedule allowed. She also taught extra courses and focus group participation as well as taking up freelance writing gigs and selling some of her things on Craigslist.
Her first monster payment was $4,300, which she saved through extra work. She made some lifestyles changes by carrying her own coffee, snacks and water to work as well.
It also led to her being more active as she started inviting friends to go on hikes instead of meeting for coffee or meals. One thing Page confessed that she would change about her strategy is the lack of savings she ended up with in the year that she made monster payments.
