Two months before I was set to graduate from Tulane Law School in May 2012, I was required to meet with the financial aid counselor. For the first time, I saw what law school cost me: $153,261.23. This was much higher than the $105,000 I had originally estimated prior to going to law school, but losing half your scholarship one year (add $12,500), adding a summer abroad (add $13,400) , accruing interest on your loans (add $13,940.75) and yearly increases in tuition and living expenses (add $8,000) will do that. After the initial shock, I decided I wasn’t going to think about it. I had other issues I needed to focus on before having a heart attack over how much debt I had just accumulated: finals, graduation, studying for the bar, and most important, finding a job.

Fast forward to October 2012. Finals: check. Graduation: check. Bar exam: check (I passed!). Finding a job: check! I had just accepted a position with a small oil & gas services company as an in house attorney. My starting salary was $85,000 and life was good. That was until I remembered about that $153,261.23 I owed. I was 32 at the time and would turn 33 in January when my first payment was due. I decided at that moment that I wanted to be student loan free by my 40th birthday. That gave me seven years to pay down the $153K plus another $17K in undergrad student loans. One hundred seventy thousand dollars, plus interest, in seven years…I could do this.

To accomplish this goal, I did the first thing anyone should do: create a budget. As simple as this sounds too many people do not truly account for what they bring in and what they spend. For my new job, I would be paid bi-weekly. That’s 26 paychecks, but I would only use two paychecks a month for budget purposes so I could use the other 2 to pay down my loans.