I Was Working While in College to Graduate Debt-Free

In 2007, I was in my third year of college at FIU in Miami, studying Environmental Science. I knew I wouldn’t graduate with a high-paying job, so I didn’t want to graduate with student loan debt.

I worked two part-time office jobs and went to school full-time. I was paying for tuition out-of-pocket and was totally financially independent, which meant I was responsible for my own rent, utilities, groceries, and car expenses. Since I lived alone and didn’t have a roommate, I had no one to split the expenses with.

The effect of the recession seemed to happen overnight, with the cost of my rent, groceries, and gas rising from one day to the next. Since I had already been living month-to-month, the increased expenses led me to feel a massive amount of stress.

I began to have episodes where I felt faint and experienced heart palpitations. I know now that I was experiencing panic attacks.

I lived in Miami, where there was always somewhere to be

I loved Miami. It had been my home my whole life, and all of my friends lived there, but even before the recession, I always felt like I would never get ahead. There was always a party to go to, a last-minute dinner invitation, or a concert I wanted to attend, so the minimal cash I had leftover after my bills got paid seemed to go out as quickly as it would come in. Even when I did my best to budget, something always came up, like needing to buy something to wear for an event or having to split the bill with friends at a restaurant.

I began to think a lot about what my future would hold if I continued to live in Miami. Even after graduation, I couldn’t see a lot changing as far as finances went. I’d likely be renting forever, unable to save up for a house.

But what bothered me the most was the amount of pressure I felt. Since I could never save up any money, I worried about how quickly things could go wrong if I got sick even for just a week and couldn’t go to work.

I made a dramatic change in order to lower my expenses

During this time, I had been visiting family that had moved a few hours north of Miami every couple of months. It was a dramatically different way of life in the small town they now lived in, with less traffic and less noise. I caught myself calculating how much less it would cost to live there and allowed myself to envision a different way of life.

I ended up moving over the summer with my partner at the time and finding a house to rent together. Just the fact that we could afford a house for less than what I was paying for a one-bedroom apartment felt like things were looking up. We each got jobs that we enjoyed, didn’t have to work as much, and were able to spend more time together. We were even able to afford more groceries and started to save up money again. That was the most important part of our plan because we eventually wanted to move out of state once we had saved up enough money to do so.

It worked out well at first, but I eventually questioned my decisions

At the time, it seemed like a temporary change, but it altered the course of my life forever. I was unable to transfer to the local college, so my degree was put on hold indefinitely. I went from feeling like I was finally moving in the right direction to feeling stuck again. Once a couple of years passed by, I began to miss home and wondered if I should have just stuck it out and found a way to sustain my life as it was. Why, for instance, hadn’t I decided to get a roommate or simply take a semester off to destress and save up some money before returning?

Eventually, I had my son, which changed everything for me. I didn’t want to leave the family I had close by, and once again, I knew I would never be able to afford the life I wanted to have with my son somewhere with a higher cost of living. I started doing my best to make the best of the situation, and I ended up never leaving the area.

The recession resulted in more for me than simply higher prices

I still look back at the recession as a turning point in my life. Since I could already barely afford my life as it was when the higher prices hit, it led me to make dramatic changes I wouldn’t have otherwise.

While I’m certainly not unhappy with the way my life turned out, I know it would have been very different if the recession hadn’t come at such a delicate financial time for me.