It feels surreal writing this, as I sit here (finally!) in my home. Nearly two months after paying off the very last of my debt. Coming back home has reiterated the completion of this arduous journey. It happened with a lot of sacrifice, and mostly plain, hard work.

Honestly, I don’t feel as if I had really had much time, if any, to celebrate. It seemed as though I paid it off and then it was onto the next task, which was to quickly try and save enough money to tide me over for a much needed rest again this winter. With that now completed, I have begun the exciting and slightly intimidating task of learning how to invest my money! Passive income here I come.

I feel as though I have a long way to go with a lot of my goals, and it is easy to forget that I paid off 60k of debt in 13 months of work. To me, it doesn’t sound like much considering everything I had to do to get there. Here are some of the reasons I got to where I am:

1. I hired a financial coach for 6 months
2. I chose not to rent an apartment while I was working for most of the time from March-October
3. I stored my things at friends places rather than a storage unit
4. I cut out as many of my bills as I could
5. I took the winter of 2020/2021 off so I could fully recuperate before going hard at it again
6. I consolidated once I was financially able to in the last 5 months
7. I worked a crazy amount!

I feel its important to be open about my journey, mostly to help inspire any of you reading this to know its possible. Even without doing it the crazy way I did, it is still possible along a longer time frame. Even if you have more bills, or a mortgage, or kids, it is definitely possible. The biggest thing I will time and time again recommend is a financial coach. She helped me realize where my money had been really going, and taught me the skills of tracking my spending. Now I can do that on my own, and feel more confident about my abilities to manage my money.

Overall I feel this is really just the beginning of a new journey with money for me, and I am excited to embraced more abundance. I hope moving into 2022 you can do the same for yourself!