Here is the story of how I paid off my student loan by flipping a house on a tiny budget in Ontario, Canada.
It all began when I graduated from University in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in science and had the dream of working for the Ministry of Natural Resources. I, unfortunately, did not get the dream job and began working as a lab technician for $14.00/hr. At this time I had been living with my father and was able to put most of my paycheque towards my student loan, especially since I had been given a 6 month grace period before they would begin charging interest.
Once I moved out of my father’s house in 2012 I was able to apply for government repayment assistance as I was still making under $50,000 a year up until 2016. During this time the government was paying the interest on my loan and I was still contributing $200 a month in order to pay down my student loan. As much as I felt like I had been trying to claw my way out of an unimaginable amount of debt I had finally paid back the first $10,000. This meant I was still left with another $40,000.
In 2016 I was lucky enough to work my way into a management position as a personal trainer in Ottawa, Ontario, and began to double my income. This felt like an absolute blessing but that also meant that I was going to have to start paying over $200 a month in interest since I was making over $50,000 a year now.
My boyfriend at the time was only making around $25,000 a year so we were living on a serious budget. Our apartment was something out of a horror movie, you wouldn’t dare sit in that bathtub and the basement would flood every time it rained, to which the landlord would just tell us to “open the window to dry it out”…?? BUT it was only $900 all-inclusive so we took it! We bought a rust bucket of a car with cash for my boyfriend and I would walk to work to save money.
In the spring of 2017 I decided that in order to be successful in life we needed to own a house, keep in mind I am a Gemini and when we get something in our head we are 100% determined to make it happen. With the tiny budget that we had, we found a terrifying fixer-upper on the outskirts of Ottawa on the river. It was literally our only option so we bought it!
By October 2017, we were all moved in and were making a combined $75,000 a year. I was only paying an extra $100 on top of my interest payments for my student loan and we kept ourselves on an extremely tight budget. All of our remaining income went straight into renovations for the house.
In December 2019, my boyfriend proposed and I began to plan a small backyard wedding. All of our money was still being put into the renovations, and nothing would stop us; not even a wedding. I had budgeted $5,000 for a June 2020 wedding then the pandemic hit March 2020 and all our plans came to a screeching halt.
I was laid off as a personal trainer, and my now fiance was also laid off and, unfortunately, didn’t qualify for government assistance. Once the panic settled and we realized that we would survive, we were able to hold our mortgage payments due to the circumstances and continued renovating the house.
With the lockdown still happening in June, we had cut back our wedding guest list to only our parents and a photographer. In the long run, it was probably a blessing because it only ended up costing us around $2500 all said and done. It was beautiful and intimate with the people we loved most.
Once July came around we had finally finished renovating the house and were now able to put it on the market as we had decided to move back home to small town Peterborough, Ontario to be closer to friends and family.
The market was getting pretty hot during the pandemic and we were able to sell our house for $360,000, which meant that we would pocket $140,000. This gave us $40,000 to pay off my student loan and another $100,000 to put down on our next property.
Now looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing but I understand that we had taken a big risk and worked nonstop for almost 3 years straight. It isn’t something that everyone can do and every time I felt like giving up I would listen to podcasts and audiobooks that would motivate me to stop feeling like a victim and kept me going.
In the long run all the hard work paid off, if we hadn’t bought the house then we would have had to take on second jobs in order to pay off my student debt.
The second option that we had, if we had decided to keep the house, would be to add the debt onto our mortgage with a lower interest rate but I would recommend increasing the payments in order to pay off the house in the same amount of time.
If you made it to the end of this post, thank you for taking the time to read my journey. I hope this gives someone a little more hope because it was posts like this that helped me push through and keep fighting. Trust me, I never thought I would be posting a debt-free journey.
Follow along as I navigate through life as a 33-year-old trying to come up with crazy ideas on how to become successful with very little money and very big dreams. Please feel free to add your own crazy ideas in the comments, I would love to hear them!
