27-year-old Mandy Velez managed to bid farewell to the most terrifying thing of all: her student loan debt.
She paid off $120,000 in loans and celebrated with a funeral-themed photoshoot as she announced the death of her debts.
In her photos that quickly went viral, Velez wears a black dress with dark makeup in New York City’s Trinity Church Cemetery.
She poses with silver ‘102k’ balloons, the amount she managed to pay off in only six years.
Velez wrote on Facebook: “It is with immense pleasure that I announce the death of my student loans. On August 2, 2019, after six years, I finally killed them.
“It was a slow death but was worth every bit of the fight.”
A senior social media editor at The Daily Beast, Velez said that in 2013, she graduated from college with $75,000 in loans, not including interest.
She then moved to New York and paid off $1,000 per month by taking jobs she didn’t even care about but helped her ‘survive.’
She never missed a payment for five years. But last year, she felt a sudden change that encouraged her to pay off the remaining $32,000 in only 8 months!
“Maybe it was feeling like my life was on hold, but I just remember thinking I was DONE. I didn’t want to owe anyone anything more,” she explained.
“I wanted to start saving for my future. A house. Kids. A life. So I made a decision — I’d become debt-free by 30. I’m proud to say I accomplished my goal 2 years early.”
To make it through, she cut her budged and lived off of less than a third of her salary, avoiding ride-share services and making her own lunch. She also took on sidelines, such as cat sitting, babysitting and dog walking.
“I used the ‘snowball’ method to pay them off faster and avoid more insane interest rates, which is how my loan total came to 102K —27k more than what I actually borrowed,” she wrote.
“Was it easy? No. Worth it? I’m smiling in a cemetery. 102K lifted from my back. You tell me.”
Velez also said that she hoped her story would inspire others who also need to pay off student loans.
“All I know is, this nightmare, this crisis, needs to end,” she expressed. “Being open about my debt, and the hoops I had to jump through to get rid of it, is how I’m trying to help.”
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