7 Inspiring Personal Finance Success Stories from Reddit Users – Learn the Secrets to Financial Freedom! (2 of 4)

2. Semi-retiring in your 40s

Another Reddit user shared a story about how she and her spouse were able to semi-retire in their mid-40s thanks to a life of frugality, stashing away a significant amount of their income into investment accounts, and living in a studio apartment, and forgoing cars in order to maximize their savings. Today they live primarily off of the interest their wealth has generated as well as flexible freelancing work that they can pick and choose at their own pleasure. It did require them to hold off on having children until they had high financial stability, but the fact that they could devote 100% of their lives to raising them made the wait worth it.

3. Paying Off $100,000 in Student Loans

If you earned a college degree from a small, liberal arts institution, there’s a very good chance that you also left with a tremendous amount of student debt. In the case of one Reddit user, it topped out at over $100,000! While most lenders allow you 10 years to pay it off, this individual made it a goal to be debt-free in four. What was his secret? For starters, a large amount came in the form of low-interest subsidized loans (ones that didn’t start acclimating interest until a few months after he had graduated). He also found a way to balance his studies while working around 30 hours a week as a student during the semester and as many as 50 hours in the summers. Once he went out into the real world, he held a full-time job along with a 20-hour part-time job on the side, putting every single cent that wasn’t going towards food and rent into paying off the student loans. The real lesson to learn here is that it didn’t come easy, so unless you plan on winning a jackpot lottery, be ready to put in a lot of hours at the office.