Speaker 1: Having student loan debt can definitely feel crippling. And I know because I've been there. When my husband and I got married, we had over $87,000 of student loan debt and it was overwhelming. But the good news is that there is a way out of student loan debt. There are a couple methods that you can use to pay off student loans and ways that you can pay off student loans faster. So today I'm breaking it down to share with you how you can pay off student loans and make it a faster process, which will also save you time and money. And I also want to thank Juno for sponsoring today's video and they also can help you to be able to pay off your student loans faster. Hey guys, I'm Marissa and welcome back to my channel. Here on my channel, we talk about life and money and how you can enjoy life while still accomplishing financial goals through the use of a budget. So if that sounds like something interesting to you, scroll down and hit that subscribe button so you won't miss any new videos. When I went to college, I, like many of my other colleagues, took out student loan debt to be able to foot the bill. I took out private and federal loans and ended up with over $40,000 of a student loan balance after going to school for even three years. I was able to graduate in three years instead of four. I ended up meeting my husband, Jacob, at college and he also took on student loan debt. So when we got married, we had over $87,000 of student loans that we had to pay off. The good news is that we were able to pay off our debt in two and a half years. When we got married, we were very much on the same page together when it came to our finances and we wanted to be able to pay off our debt as soon as possible. So this became a really big financial goal that we were very intense on. We made a lot of sacrifices during those first couple of years of our marriage to be able to pay off that debt, but it was worth it when we became debt-free. If you are working to pay off student loan debt, there are a couple methods that you can use to help get that momentum rolling and pay off debt as soon as possible. The first method is with the debt snowball. The way that the debt snowball works is you list all of the debts that you have, like all of your individual student loans that you have, and you list them out smallest to largest amount. You don't even worry about the interest rate, just list out the amount. And then you work on paying them off in that order. So you make minimum payments on all of your student loans and then whatever extra money you have remaining in your budget, you take that extra amount and put it towards that first loan to be able to pay it off as soon as possible. And then once that first loan is done, then you take that amount you were putting to that first loan and then you put it to your second loan and then keep going down the list. The great benefit to the debt snowball is that it has great psychological wins. When you get to pay off that first loan pretty quickly, it feels really good to be able to cross something off the list, and then you move on to that next loan and really get that ball rolling as you go down the list. The other way that you can work on paying off student loan debt is by utilizing the debt avalanche, which has you list out all of your debts by largest to smallest interest rate. And so you're paying them off in order of highest interest rate to lowest interest rate. And you do the same thing as the debt snowball where you make minimum payments on all of your student loans and then you work at aggressively tackling that debt with the highest interest rate first. So you take every extra dollar you have in your budget and put that towards your debt with the highest interest rate and pay that one off first and then work on that next debt. The great thing about utilizing the debt avalanche is that it has more of a financial benefit because you'll be paying less in interest by tackling those debts with a higher interest rate first. When we were paying off our student loan debt, we kind of used a little bit of a mix of both. I remember when we first got home from our honeymoon, we had some extra cash that we had received from our wedding and we had a small loan remaining. That was one of our student loans. And so we took the money that we had from our wedding and we just paid off that small loan first. It felt really good to have that initial quick win. But after that, we then listed out all of our student loans and we paid them off in order using the debt avalanche to be able to pay off those student loans with a higher interest rate first. With using the debt avalanche or the debt snowball, honestly, it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. Just find whatever method is going to be best for you and use it to continue on with that momentum and motivation for you to pay off your student loan debt as soon as possible. Using the debt snowball or the debt avalanche is really helpful, but what's even more helpful is finding ways for you to be able to make this process go by faster. So let's talk about four ways that you can pay off debt quicker. The first way is by refinancing your student loans through Juno. And again, thanks so much to Juno for sponsoring today's video. Student loan refinancing is great for those who have high interest student loan debt that is above a 6% interest rate. And especially when you have private student loans. Interest rates right now are probably cheaper than what they were when you ended up taking out those loans. And 50,000 people per month are refinancing. Refinancing has a large potential upside in terms of savings, reducing your monthly payment, and therefore helping you pay off debt quicker by paying less in interest. So here's how it works. Juno works with lenders to get you the best rates. And you will receive a rate 0.25% lower than if you were to go to the lending partner directly. And Juno also offers cash back in some cases. And here's the really great part. It's completely free to you. Juno makes money through the lenders that they work with. So therefore it's at no cost to you. When I had student loan debt, I didn't refinance my loans because it seemed confusing or overwhelming or honestly too good to be true, like waiting for what's the catch. But this is why I've absolutely loved talking with the Juno team. They truly care about their members and are transparent in all aspects of their service to you. So refinancing with Juno is very legitimate. And I appreciate how much transparency they have, especially around how they make money and that it's at no cost to the member. They have a great support team that you can chat with on their site and they can help answer any questions that you may have because they are truly putting their members first. So check out the Juno community and join the over 80,000 members that are already saving money. Check out the link in the description box down below for some free information and see if a student loan refinance at no cost to you makes sense for your student loans. And again, thanks to Juno for sponsoring today's video. The second thing you can do to pay off debt faster is to create a monthly budget. Budgeting is so important because it's a plan that you can set for your finances each month. By using a budget, you can then know how much money you are planning to send towards your financial goals, like paying off student loan debt, as well as making sure that you're covering all of your necessities and some wants in there as well. So that's why it's so important to set a budget every single month and then also check in with it to see how the month is going. It definitely takes some time to get in the habit of budgeting. It may take about three months. So if the first month doesn't work out, that's okay. Just take what you learned and apply it to the next month. And if you wanna get started on budgeting, I have tons of videos here on my channel that can help you get started. The reason why we started budgeting is because we wanted to pay off our student loans and we still budget today now that we are debt-free. The third way you can pay off your student loans faster is by cutting out expenses. So when you take a look at your budget, you may see that you're spending more money on a certain expense than you were maybe expecting, or maybe you have some things in there that are just unnecessary. If you want to be able to pay off your student loans faster, then you can cut out some of these unnecessary expenses, which will free up more space in your budget that you can then put towards your student loan debt. So cut out the unnecessary things, the things that you don't even enjoy spending money on or don't need to spend money on, and then look at reducing some expenses of other things that you have in your budget. Maybe instead of eating out five times a month, maybe you could cut that back to four times and then you can free up more space in your budget that can then go towards your student loan debt. And the fourth way you can pay off student loan debt faster is by making more money. If you have more money to work with in your monthly budget, then you have more money that you can put towards your student loan debt. I will also say that this is a really important factor, especially when you take a look at your budget and you realize that there's really not anything else that you can cut. Making more money is really going to move the needle and help you to be able to put more towards your student loan debt each month. You can make more money with a side hustle. It feels like everyone's doing a side hustle these days, but that is just some additional work that you may do on the side of your regular job, whether that is like starting your own kind of business or doing some ride share driving or grocery delivery for people. There are so many apps and websites that are having people do side hustles right now. There are so many options out there. You could also see about taking on some overtime. If you are paid hourly, you could ask your boss about taking on some more hours and getting paid that additional overtime. Or you could even look to change jobs. If it's time in your career for you to make a change, maybe you start looking at applying for other jobs and seeing if there are other higher salaries out there that you could have, and that could really help you to be able to have more money in your monthly budget and pay off that student loan debt faster. Student loan debt can most definitely feel overwhelming, but the good news is that you don't need to have it forever and it feels so good to be able to be debt-free. You don't have to be paying off student loan debt for forever. You can work at paying it off quickly and move on to your next financial goal. So don't forget to check out Juno and see if student loan refinancing for free could be a great option for you. I will have a link to them down in the description box below. And then let me know in the comments below, what are your thoughts on student loan debt and how are you working to pay off your student loan debt on a faster schedule? And I will look forward to seeing you in the next video. Bye.

Speaker 2: ♪ Did you ever stop and think ♪ ♪ Why spend too much time just getting ready ♪ ♪ Let me be honest, I don't know a single thing ♪