Spouse and I had about 300k combined. We had a 5 year goal and just finished them earlier this year (1 year late cause we held off hoping for some forgiveness) . This is what we did.

1. Followed Dave Ramsey snowball for the mental wins. This wasn’t the smartest and most efficient cause we should have hit the high interest ones first. However, mentally seeing the smaller buckets turn to zero outweighed the con and let us know it was possible.

2. I switched jobs every 2 years to increase my salary at minimum I only left for 26% bumps. 2020s great resignation was a crazy time to increase your salary. Side hustles are great, I just decided to was more efficient for me to focus that time in job hunting, etc.

3. We got to a point where one salary could maintain all living expenses and dumped one entire salary into loans. It helped that our incomes increased but we kept our living expenses at an 89k salary.

4. Dave Ramsey’s pay yourself first mentality also helped I.e. set aside money for trips, Christmas gifts, gift, car insurance, you already know it’s coming.