How We Paid Off $70,000 in Debt in 3 Years With Extreme Frugality

My wife and I got married the same month we graduated college. We were young, in love, and $70,000 in debt.

With two undergraduate degrees in hand, we tied the knot and rented our first apartment without any jobs and barely any money in the bank.

Like any young lovers, we decided that we would do whatever it takes, and we had a near infinite belief that things would work out.

We also knew that we didn’t want to live in debt for long, and that we would attack that debt ferociously.

Within a month, I had a full-time job secured and my wife, Mollie found a part-time teaching job. Both roles paid well, but not an incredible amount. 

Thankfully, we were both on pretty much the same page about the kind of lifestyle we wanted to live. 

Well, let me be honest, I had visions of extreme frugality, which I thought would be a fun challenge for us, and my gracious wife was mostly up for my shenanigans.

We ended up paying off every dime of that debt in the first 3 years of marriage, before we had any children.

Both of us look back fondly on this period of life as a happy one. We didn’t have much, but we had each other and a common mission. 

In the rest of this post, I’ll share a few things we learned from the experience, as well as the mindsets that helped us stick with it.

If you’re in a similar situation, I hope our story and these tips give you a little more confidence that you can do it too.

Make not spending money the default option.

This is the foundation of all money saving tips. In our first few years of marriage, we never debated ourselves or each other about whether a purchase was necessary or not. 

The default answer to that question was no, every single time. 

We didn’t contemplate extra trips, or going out to eat, or buying new clothes just for fun. 

The few times we splurged were things like spitting a small icecream, or going out to eat and ordering water and one appetizer to share.

As soon as you break the seal, and allow small expenses to creep in, the whole thing becomes 10x harder. 

I recommend drawing a hard, crisp line and don’t even dare going over it. 

I know this makes me sound like a drill sergeant, but trust me that this will make the journey easier in the long run.

Frame the experience as an adventure that will create memories.

I’m grateful that my wife and I were in the experience when we had the opportunity to pay off this debt quickly, and that we had plenty of safety nets in our college degrees, close friends, and supportive families. 

Paying off debt because your back is up against the wall would, I’m sure, be a different experience

But I deeply believe the idea that most things in life are as good or as bad as you make them out to be. 

How you choose to frame the events in your life has a huge impact on how you’ll remember them. 

For Mollie and I, this was an adventure in adopting an extreme lifestyle. 

We knew it would be hard, but it was the kind of hard we chose. We wanted to do it together and make lasting memories focused on a common shared triumph.

Find a way to make progress feel tangible and fun.

I still remember the feeling of sitting around the table about once every two months, opening up our bank account and transferring whatever extra money we had saved towards our debt. 

Depending on how long we waited, it might be $1k, $2k, or even $3k. 

We liked to pay off the debt in nice, satisfying round numbers like that and make a big deal out of seeing the total decrease. 

We’d go back and look how much we’d paid off in total or in the past 6 months, all simple ways of making the progress feel real. And because we were doing this together, the excitement and sense of accomplishment was shared, and somehow sweeter. 

I think this was an important part of why we kept going, and how we sustained our motivation over multiple years of frugal living.