Using Side Hustles to Pay Off Your Student Loans and Other Debts Faster!
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Feeling trapped by debt? Get the strategies, tactics, and resources to help you pay yours off faster!
How to Side Hustle Your Way Out of Debt
Depending on where you are with your financial journey you may be dealing with debt. In some cases, a mountain of it.
Right now people are keeping an eye out on student loans and understandably so. It’s been estimated that 62% of college seniors who graduated from nonprofit colleges in 2019 had student loan debt.
It’s a burden on many budgets and can feel even heavier if you have other debts like car payments and credit cards. Did you know that the average payment for a used car is over $400?
It may be that earning more is a necessity if you’re trying to get out of debt as soon as possible.
This is why I wanted to share from the archives a discussion I had with Kevin, attorney, side hustler, and the creator of Financial Panther. Years ago, he used side hustles to pay off $87,000 in student loans in less than 3 years!
In this episode we'll get into:
- what motivated him to pay them off ASAP
- the real work involved with different side hustles
- how your phone can help you earn cash
Hope you enjoy!
If you want to get the ins and outs of repaying your student loan, please check out my interview with Jay Fleischman.
Resources to Pay Off Debts Faster
If you're ready to dump your student loan debt, here are some resources to check out:
- Best Budget and Money Apps: Personal Capital, Tiller, Mint
- Jumpstart Your Marriage and Your Money
- 5 Days to $5K
- How I Paid Off $87,000 Of Student Loans In 2.5 Years
- The Secret To Paying Off Debt
- Consumer Help Central – If you're having a hard time keeping up with your student loan payments, Jay Fleischman is THE resource.
- Student Loan Show – Jay's podcast on student loans.
- Knocking Down the Student Loan
- UberEats: Deliver with Uber Eats and earn on your own schedule
Thank You to Our Sponsor Coastal!
Support for this podcast comes from Coastal Credit Union. If you’re living in the Raleigh Durham area and looking to bank better, come check out Coastal today!
We've been members for years and love their service and competitive rates on checking and savings accounts!
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Knocking Out Student Loan Debt Faster
When Kevin finished his schooling and began his career as an attorney he had over $87,000 in student loan debt (and that's after getting a scholarship that covered 50%!).
Rather than accept that it would take years and years to chip away at his debt, Kevin decided he was going to get rid of it as soon as possible.
How did he do it? It came down to two key factors.
Optimize Your Expenses
You'd think that being a lawyer was pretty much a guaranteed and easy way for Kevin to become debt free, but there was a trap that tripped up a lot of his colleagues.
This happens to people and basically any job that you kind of you kind of start living the way everyone else in your job lives.
And so the lawyer trap here is you know people start off they get a fancy apartment you know nice car nice clothes….. they have all this nice stuff and then they have to work to pay for all that stuff.
And so and that happens to everyone you know doctors it happens to happens to anyone just coming out of college and start kind of getting this lifestyle inflation where it will.
Now you're earning income and so now you're going to need that income to pay for all this stuff that you've now gotten accustomed to that you know maybe a year ago when you were in school you didn't even need that stuff.
So I think that's kind of what I was trying to avoid was falling into that type of lifestyle inflation that I saw a lot of my colleagues fall into.
And it's not just lawyers that fall for this. we all can get snagged on lifestyle inflation.
Kevin remembered his parents also falling for it while he was growing up.
To fight this, Kevin chose to continue living like a college student – meaning he kept his expenses low.
….it's not that much of a sacrifice to just live the same way you live and in school for you know a couple more years.
…it's from when I saw my colleagues in my job the amount of money they spent just went up as soon as they started working you know and they would all move out of their crappy apartments and move into a nice apartment.
And I just kind of stayed in the same type of lifestyle as living before. And when you do that you just end up with a ton of money just leftover that you can really throw into debt.
Earn More
Even though Kevin was making good money as an attorney, he knew that to grow that gap and have money to pay off his student loans ASAP, he needed to increase his income.
Another thing …and this is something I've done…..I still do now is just side hustling with the type of apps and sharing economy and all that on demand economy stuff.
As Kevin pointed out in our chat, you can also cut back expenses so much. Sometimes it's a matter of earning more that can help you break through and knock out your student loans.
There are different opportunities like freelancing or taking on a second job, but they can both have some cons that may not work for you.
Depending on your career, you may not be able to freelance on the side. If you have a specific availability, a second job can be more of a burden than a help as you're juggling two supervisors.
For many, the sharing economy can be a big boon. One choice that may fit the bill is UberEats.
Delivering food with Uber Eats is a flexible, easy way to earn money on your schedule. You get paid for bringing people the food they love from local restaurants. You can deliver day or night, when it is convenient for you.
If approved you just sign onto the app, and you can start receiving delivery requests in your area.
With Uber Eats, you can choose how you deliver. Depending on your city, you may be able to deliver food with your car, bike, or scooter.
At the end of each delivery, you'll be eligible to receive a tip.
Get your earnings when you want them. Review the terms to learn how you can cash out with Instant Pay up to five times per day.
You can get on the road and start earning before you know it. Learn more and start delivering with Uber Eats here!
Support the Podcast!
If you enjoyed this episode and found it helpful, here are some ways to support it.
- Spread the word. If you have friends who could boost their savings, please share this episode with them on social media or just email the link!
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This episode was originally released in December 2016. Show notes have been updated in March 2022.
