Take a house. Turn it into money. That was the plan.

I finished up my undergraduate degree in about 5 years. I dabbled for 3 years taking lots of art and photography classes at the University of Minnesota. I took 2 semesters off to adventure. I finished up at Hamline University in St. Paul with a degree in psychology. It was awesome.

My total debt amounted to about 30k. All-in-all not bad considering the 5 years with 2 of them at a private university. Seven in 10 college seniors (71%) who graduated last year had student loan debt, with an average of $29,400 per borrower.

My partner came out of his undergrad endeavors with over 50k on his back. When we got together we had the joy of unifying our lives…and our debt.

Don’t get me wrong, education is a privilege & I feel fortunate to live in a time and place where I have the access and had the opportunity. But debt can be a barrier to a lot of other things: saving, investing, exploring. For me, the most challenging part about it was the way I felt. When it comes to post-education debt management — It can feel pretty hopeless. Confining. Draining.

A friend expressed it like this:

So when my partner and I considered our options — we considered what we might be able to do well. We came up with a plan. Buy a house. A cheap house. Fix it up. Sell it.

Predictions were that things would turn around in our South Minneapolis neighborhood. The hipsters were heading out of uptown in our direction. (I was one of them.) The neighborhood was surely embarking upon a change.

So we saved up some cash (with the help of some friends who let us trade work for a stay in their empty condo), took advantage of the first-time-home-buyers program stimulating the market in 2009 and bought a short-sale in South Minneapolis.

It looked like this:

We had to rip out the cabinets the day we moved in because of a roach infestation… let’s just say we had no idea what we were getting into. And we got into a lot.

The next 5 years were a battle — mostly with materials and with our will to go on with the project(s.)

We poured blood (actual blood), sweat and tears into the house.

One day — somewhere in the middle — the place looked like this:

We labored on — did work and rework in many cases because we really didn’t know what we were doing the first time we did things.

Then one day — almost suddenly — it looked like this:

…and a week later we sold it. I am proud to say that we successfully executed against our plan and were able to rid ourselves of our student loan debt and had some left over for the next chapter(s.)

What’s next? Well — lots of things I am sure. We are about to find out.

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