88: Consciously Choosing to be Debt Free with Ashley Likely

Ashley Likely grew up with parents who provided everything she needed, but not necessarily everything she wanted. They were able to pay for her housing in College, but not for much else. So (spoiler alert) she graduated college with $77,000 of student loan debt.

A conversation with a ‘preachy’ coworker showed her the light of paying down debt, saving aggressively and starting to invest. They started encouraging each other at work, learning about investments, contributing to 401(k)s, listening to podcasts and doing research. 

Ashley stumbled across a blog post written by Scott Trench where he shared “Reducing your debt is similar to increasing your income.” She had $56,000 in student loan debt at the time she read this article and says “Scott’s post changed my life.”

She thought, if I could eliminate the student loan, what could that do for me mentally and financially? As a speech language pathologist, she has the opportunity for overtime, which she took every chance she got. 

Her naturally frugal ways kept her from going into further debt with car loans, vacations and all the trappings of “adulthood” by simply avoiding them. Avoiding these debt traps allowed her to bust out her debt and prepare for her future as a real estate mogul!

In This Episode We Cover:

• Ashley's money journey
• Worked side jobs and open up credit card to get an employee discount
• Total debt she had from credit card and student loan after college
• What she did after college
• Used her income tax return to paid out her credit card debt and bought a house
• On her journey to financial freedom
• Aggressively attacked student loan debt in 2017
• What prompted her to paid down her student loan debt
• Got interested in real estate
• How he got downpayment for her investment property
• On househacking
• And SO much more!

Links from the Show

• BiggerPockets Podcast 268: Acquiring 20 Long-Distance Rental Homes (on a Military Salary!) with Rich Carey
• Broke Millennial
• BiggerPockets Money Podcast 05: Jump Starting Your Early FI Plans by Live-in Flipping with Mindy Jensen
• Ashley's Instagram

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