Jessica's Blog

On Monday, I was able to see a presentation by a Adam Carroll. During his presentation, Adam gave lots of tips and advice on how to manage your money, especially while you’re in your twenties. His main conclusion, and the point he continually came back to, was this: if you like like nobody else does in your twenties, you’ll be able to live like no one else can in your thirties, forties, and beyond.

When Adam graduated from college, he had a seemingly typical story for most modern college graduates: he was loaded with debt. He had almost 30 thousand in student loans, as well as 8 thousand in credit card debt. Instead of paying it off traditionally, however, Adam and his wife decided to make ends meet on one income, and used the other to pay off debt. He advocated for paying off debt sequentially, in order of the smallest debt to the largest debt. This, he said, gave him the motivation to keep going because he could actually see the results of what he was doing. Instead of splitting up payments between debts, Adam focused on one debt at a time until it was paid off.

As a college student, I found Adam’s speech to be inspiring. I was lucky enough to get a full tuition scholarship, so all I have to pay for is room, board, books, and other fees, but even that can be expensive. My current student loan debt is around five thousand dollars, and while that may not sound like much (especially compared to Adam’s debt), it is only my first year of college. I likely have several more student loans to take out.

I have already started making plans on how I should pay off this debt as a result of Adam’s speech. I have also become a little more aware of the money I spend. Because I have a debit card, I tend to overspend because the money isn’t physically in front of me. To combat that problem, I have decided to start giving myself a more strict budget and using an ATM when I can so that I can physically be more cognizant of the money that I spend. Although I’m not sure that I’ll choose to financially plan my twenties the way that Adam did, I found his talk to be very beneficial and worthwhile. If you ever get the chance to hear him speak, I would definitely recommend it!