Why I'm Doing It This Way
Day 8 | $0 paid | $90,717 till freedom
Why I'm not consulting on the side to make extra money
Yawn! If I wanted to do consulting, I would've interviewed with McKinsey, BCG, or Bain for a full-time position. I work a desk job fifty hours a week--I don't want to work a desk-job on the weekend and during the nights, too. I want a change of pace. I want to get out of my comfort zone. I want to do something different. I want to get away from the stuffy white-collar business for a moment and take a deep breath of life. I want to pull drunk people around downtown with my bike and a trailer.
Why I won't sell off my cars to pay down the debt
The idea behind this challenge is to cut costs and increase revenue to pay off my loans. If I can do that and keep the cars, then I get to keep some useful/critical assets on my balance sheet and maintain positive net worth.
The idea behind this is challenge is not to be completely asset-poor by the time I pay off my loans--I want to have positive net worth, not zero net worth. I already cashed out some of my assets--my IRA and stocks--to pay down some of my debt. If I sell off the cars to pay down the debt, then yes, I get closer to claiming victory over my challenge. However, I absolutely have to have a car, so I'll have to go straight to the credit union after I make my last student loan payment to take out an auto loan, which sounds a bit self-defeating.
Why I will never monetize this blog
You'll never see ads on this blog (while I still have loans to pay) because I don't want to make money "unnaturally." I want to pay off these student loans by cutting costs and increasing revenue through hard work, not through sensationalism. A Harvard MBA who make a modest tech salary has vowed to pay down his 10-to-15-year $90k in student loans in 10 months. That sounds somewhat sensational, and yes, the stats for this blog do have a slight hint of the viral in them (considering I have done zero promotion for this blog, other than posting a link on my FB wall).
I could probably promote this more and make a few bucks by hosting ads and putting those funds towards my student loans, but I don't want to. I want to prove that crazy ideas and brand names don't pay off debt--good old-fashioned belt-tightening and some elbow grease do.
(At least that's what I hope.)