The Spiritual Side of Becoming Debt-free

“For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11).

It’s all fun and games until you suddenly make too much money to qualify for an income-driven repayment (IDR) plan for your student loans.

At least, that’s how it was for my husband and me.

I didn’t have any student loans when I graduated from college (thank you, mom and dad!), but my husband, Jesse, had about $30,000. After we were married, we filled out a form and paid a tiny amount every month. That giant loan was, happily, out of sight and out of mind — that is, until our incomes gradually increased within our first few years of marriage.

The rude awakening of realizing we’d have to pay several hundred dollars per month until our estimated payoff date of the year 2030 made us realize that debt is, truly, for the birds. We wanted no more of it. So, we embarked on our “debt snowball” that stretched us thin, made us better people, and, ultimately, helped us become debt free.

Student Loan Debt by the Numbers

My husband and I were pretty normal. Forbes estimates that the average student loan debt balance for college grads is $32,731. In 2018, nearly 65% of college seniors who graduated from college had student loan debt.

But “normal” was limiting and not where we wanted to be, financially. Hundreds of dollars every month went toward making minimum payments. The thought of doing this for the years it would take to pay off our debt at that rate was daunting and discouraging. Thinking of all the better ways we wanted to spend our hard-earned money got us thinking that, maybe, there was a better way.

Being a Good Steward of God’s Gifts

Debt closes doors. Conversely, financial freedom opens them. When we had a pile of debt, we felt trapped. If this was normal, we wanted to be weird!

Not only did we hate to see our paychecks exit our account just as quickly as they entered it, but it also was sad to think of how much more we could do with our money in terms of generosity if only we didn’t have so much debt.

Being debt-free, we concluded, is a way of being a good steward of the gifts we’ve been given. My husband has a great job, and I have a thriving business. We want to use the fruits of those careers to provide for our family and help build up the Church and Her mission, not fund student loan companies with interest for the next decade.

So, there was a spiritual aspect to our decision to become debt-free: The faster we got out of debt, the sooner we could be the ones to decide where our money went. The thought of being able to give more and plan for our future family was thrilling and sufficient motivation for us to dig in and do the hard work of eliminating our debt.

How We Became Debt-free

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Dave Ramsey’s YouTube Channel, which gave us the inspiration, knowledge, and encouragement to start our debt snowball and see our balances tick closer and closer to zero. A debt snowball involves paying off debts from smallest to largest, without regard to interest rates. The idea is that clearing individual loans with relative rapidity will give you the motivation to push harder and throw even more money at debt. It certainly had this effect on us, and every decrease in our loan balance felt like a major triumph.

We were able to pay off $30,000 in student loan debt in seven months. If you want to do something similar with your debt, I highly recommend checking out Dave Ramsey’s “Baby Steps,” but here are a few habits we formed that worked well for us:

Find a Side Hustle

When paying off debt, it always helps to have a little extra income to put toward extra payments. While running my business, I also have a part-time job for my diocese that gives us an income boost each month, making it much easier to make significant extra payments without worrying about covering our basic expenses.

Limit Eating Out

A nice dinner out with friends or family is fun, and if you do it once in awhile, it won’t put your checking account at risk. But habitually eating out for the sake of convenience was something we put an end to, and it gave us a surprising amount of extra wiggle room in our budget. We marked major debt-reduction milestones with a (reasonably priced) lunch out together, but learning to cook new dishes at home helped us stay on track with our budget.

Cut Back on Unnecessary Expenses 

Creating a precise budget helped us look at where exactly our money was going and whether it really needed to be going there. (For example, did we really need three different streaming services? No, we didn’t.)

We didn’t live like we were monks in a monastery, but we cut things we didn’t need or didn’t use often enough to justify the expense. Instead, we found fun and free things to do, like weekend hikes, that didn’t cost us a thing but still helped us enjoy our down time together.

Kiss Your Savings Goodbye (for Now) 

This step was the hardest part of following Ramsey’s plan. The “Baby Steps” told us to cut our savings down to only a small emergency fund. The rest went toward our debt. Putting a huge chunk of our savings toward debt was painful at the time, but it helped us make major progress in paying off our balance. Now that we’re debt-free, the balance in our savings account is ticking up at an incredible pace.

What Paying off Debt Does for Your Soul

We became debt-free, praise God, in January of 2020. When we look back at this experience, it’s not hard to see how this process not only benefited our finances but also our souls. For one thing, self-denial is an integral part of living a virtuous life — being able to tell yourself no, whether when facing a temptation to sin or when feeling the urge to spend money well outside your budget. Exercising our ability to tell ourselves “no” has given us greater skill in that area, both in terms of finance and otherwise.

Paying off debt also helped us closely examine our priorities and spend with intentionality. So many of us spend without really considering whether we need something or just feel compelled to consume. This process made us think twice before spending and learn to do without until the budget allowed a few extras. As a result, we’ve become much more intentional with our money, which carries over to greater intentionality with our time and relationships, as well.

Being Debt-free Opens Doors

Now that we’re on the other side of our student loan debt, we realize how many doors are open to us. Since we don’t have hundreds of dollars every month going to student loans, car payments, or even credit cards, we have so many more opportunities to save for the future and support the work of the Church through causes we care about.

Hebrews 12:11 says, “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” The discipline we needed to pay off our debt was certainly painful and unpleasant at the time! But we continue to see the fruits borne from this struggle and to use them to help build up the Church — and our family’s future.

Sarah Coffey is a freelance writer, copywriter, and editor. In college, she converted to Catholicism, met her now-husband Jesse, and received a B.A. in History. In 2018 she took the entrepreneurial plunge and started a copywriting and copyediting business — Coffey Copy & Content, LLC — and hasn't looked back. She loves using her talents for writing and editing to help business owners, students, and writers convey their messages powerfully and cleanly. She is also currently working on a Master's in Sacred Theology through St. Joseph's College of Maine and writes on matters of faith, theology, business, and travel. You can read more of her writing here.