9 Months Away From Debt Freedom!

I borrowed 68k in August of 2007, started repayment in December of 2009, and will make my final payment in December of 2016. How much will I have paid in those approximate 7 years you ask? $113k. Yep. That’s 45k more than I borrowed. The scary part is, so many graduates are in the same boat I am, but they do not do the math to figure out the numbers of how upside down they are. They simply pay their minimums each month for years on end without actually seeing just how much they are paying the lender. I know 45k is bad, but trust me, there are friends in my circle alone who are already at that total with 15+ years to go.

I was in The Wall Street Journal!

Does It Pay to Start at Community College? Maybe

A reporter reached out to me back in June about interviewing for a piece she was writing on transfer students for the Wall Street Journal. Of course I agreed, and I am glad I did! Although the interview process was quite lengthy, the portion of my story in the whole piece is quite small. I am in no way complaining about that though; it's just an FYI!

Late last night my mom wondered if my article made it to print in the actual printed Wall Street Journal. I hadn't even thought about that and wondered myself, so I emailed the reporter, and sure enough! The article I was in as well as my picture was printed in the wealth management section of every Wall Street Journal that day. Since my mom couldn't find any where she was, she googled where I could find them here in Nashville; I drove and picked up the remaining few papers that were left at Vanderbilt's Barnes and Nobel :)

That was a very cool feeling and a very humbling day. Big thank you to Jillian Berman for reaching out to me!

Click here to view the article!

I Was Featured on CNN Money!

"4 Steps to Paying off Your Student Loans,
from Someone Who Crushed $100,000"

After connecting on Twitter, a CNN Money reporter reached out to me via email and asked for an interview. At first I thought the email must have been spam. It wasn't. So of course I said yes.

The phone conversations and emails that transpired woke me up to just how much I have paid off. Not that it didn't sink in before, but saying my financial story aloud from the very beginning to present day was quite the humbling experience.

I started this blog in 2010 and was so... ashamed isn't the correct word... sad. Sad about the amount of debt I had and therefor did not want anyone to know my feelings about it. After all, many of my friends had the same situation going on, but for whatever reason, no one spoke up about it other than the occasional griping over hefty monthly payments. I needed an outlet. So I created this blog. I had no idea that 6 years later it would land me on the front page of the personal finance section of CNN Money. But I am glad it did. Now that I am out of the woods, I am okay with everyone knowing this blog, and all of these words, are mine. The encouragement I received after the article published was simply unexpected and overwhelming.

I do not have a business set up where I charge people for financial advice. The article does not lead you to a website where a company I created can help you. It leads you here, to this blog; it is simply my story. And Katie Lobosco, the reporter, broke all of my ramblings into 4 simple steps. Those simple steps are what got me to where I am, and I hope that others can follow suit from that. I have spent several hours with several different friends in the last 2-3 years quietly helping them create their debt pay-off plans and budgets. I have no idea what the future holds for me, career wise. It could be staying in corporate sales, singing/songwriting, music business, or it could be becoming a CFP and starting my own company; I just don't know yet. All of that to say, right now I am simply focused on the next 5 months of getting these loans out of my present day life.

If you would like to give it a read, you can find the article here.

The First Real Mistake I Ever Made

The sky was the limit and the world was my oyster. I was going to be a star. A country star. And country stars belong in Nashville, Tennessee.

However, I was not going to be one that signed a horrible record contract that I would spend my adult years trying to get out of. I was going to be smart by getting my education at Belmont University. No one will be able to take advantage of me because I will 100% know better. Music business here I come.

I didn’t let things like a 8-9% interest rate on a loan stop me because “you can always refinance when you graduate.” I learned the hard way that was indeed not true. I had made my first mistake before ever even stepping foot into the alluring spotlight of the music business. I made my first faulty steps by entering into a life altering contract with Sallie Mae. The worst part about it was that I didn’t realize I had made this grave mistake until about a year or two after I graduated.  Who knew my ‘be an educated artist’ plan would get derailed from a school loan long before a record contact was even visible? They did. Sallie Mae sees people like me coming every day. They capitalize on those people. And I don’t blame them. It was a bad decision on my part. Period.

Fast forward approximately 10 years and I am almost done paying that demon off. But you know what I lost in the meantime? That hypothetical record contract I so longed for as a young adult. I am still young, technically; I am 29. I was so screwed over by my first mistake with college loans that I could not concentrate on how not to make another mistake in the music industry. All I could think about after graduation and the years to follow was how in the world I was going to right this financial wrong of mine. So in essence, that first business mistake robbed me of my chance at not making the mistake I was trying to avoid by learning the business side of the industry. Pretty ironic if you ask me. Maybe saying Belmont is the reason I didn’t get a record contract is an excuse. There are so many country artists and songwriters who have ‘made it’ by doing whatever it takes. And whatever it takes most times means getting your car repossessed, defaulting on loans, and borrowing money from your family. I just couldn’t do that. I could not make that sacrifice. When advised that I should choose between my dream and my credit score, I picked the latter. I picked not defaulting on my loans, keeping my car, and leaving my parents and relatives out of my financial mess. I chose the safe road.

So here I am, 6 months away from closing my student loan chapter and about 7 years late on opening my music business chapter. There are outliers, but for the most part, music professionals will tell you that your window of record contract opportunity becomes exponentially smaller once you surpass the age of 25. And about 10 times harder if you are a female.

So that’s great news given I am a 29 year old female.

I am very aware these loans were my decision. A decision that haunts and taunts me daily. I got a brief taste of the industry I so love right after college and then before I knew it, I was ripped out to work in boring corporate America with my business degree so that I could afford my new ‘welcome to adulthood’ loan payments. I have hustled by working 2 jobs and budgeted unlike anyone I know. Did I have to pay off my loans 15 years early? No. But I was so incredibly infuriated by them that I needed them gone.

I have many friends who are still in the music industry, and for the most part, they love what they do every day. I don’t know many success stories of singers who have ‘made it’ quite just yet, but the majority of my college friends stuck with music. However, they are also all still stuck with their loans and very much so living paycheck to paycheck. Perhaps there was a better path for us to have taken back then that didn’t include college. Perhaps there is a better path now that we could be taking. Who knows, but what I have learned from all of this is that there is indeed such a thing as not being able to afford it. And although college is something that has been programmed into us as a necessity, there are other routes to explore that may not have college in it.

I do not regret my decision. I learned and experienced things at Belmont that will stick with me forever. However, to all who are reading this, I urge you to look for any and all possible paths before signing your freedom away to attend the college you think you “just have to go to.” I promise, there will be people around you who are successful that don’t have a minute of their time or a dime invested in a university; and there will be successful people around you who seem to be in a perpetual state of higher education. If you think you have the drive, determination, and the entrepreneurship to at least attempt your dream without the textbooks and professors, by all means, you owe it to yourself to try and blaze that trail. If the security of a degree is something you know you will need in order to stay sane, do it. But take it from me, (Ivy leagues aside) there is no real difference in having your degree come from an expensive private Christian university versus an affordable public university.

If you are just finishing high school and determining where you want to continue your education, please consider your choices very carefully, and don’t listen to the lenders and school advisers who will tell you and your parents how easy the repayment will be upon graduation; they cannot guarantee a thing. I made a mistake, and it took me a while to come to terms with that. How did I get to a place of acceptance and forgiveness? I learned from it. I learned to do the best I could in my situation, and try my very hardest to not have regret. The past could not be changed so I figured out how to make lemonade from my lemons. My hope is that if you are in a similar situation, you will try to find the positive, too. Fix the mistake with intention and grow from it.