How one woman used minimalism to pay off $50,000 in student loans in 2 and half years

Jennifer Chan, a lawyer in Toronto, Canada, says she paid off $50,000 in student loans in two-and-a-half years.

After she graduated from law school in 2015, Chan realized she needed to develop a more minimalist lifestyle to pay off her loans.

“Minimalism was realizing that I didn’t really need to live with that much,” Chan told NBC News BETTER.

Here’s how Chan, 27, author of the minimalist newsletter “Deliberate Discourse,” says she tackled her student loans.

She sold most of her stuff and kept her expenses low

Chan sold her car and almost everything she owned.

She only got about $1,000 for the car, she says, but she saved big in the long term because she was no longer paying for parking and gas.

“I just didn’t need it, and it was part of my letting go of everything,” says Chan, who now uses public transit to get to work.

Chan says she kept her expenses at or below 50 to 60 percent of her net income. She lived in a simple one bedroom apartment with her fiancé, who split the rent with her 50/50. She cooked most of her meals, she says, and allowed herself around $200 for groceries and $150 for eating out each month.

She maintained a simple budget

Chan says a simple budgeting system was a big part of paying off her loans quickly.

Instead of giving herself a laundry list of spending categories, she has only six: Rent, Spending Money, Pet expenses, Transit, Cell Phone, Utilities and Subscriptions.

She says her “Spending Money” category is the largest and accounts for most of her spending, which helps keep things simple.

“That gives me the freedom to decide how I want to spend this lump sum for the entire month,” she explains.

She automates her savings

Chan set up automatic deposits from her paycheck into three separate accounts: short-term savings, emergency savings, and a retirement account.

“So I don’t really need to think about it that much,” she says.

She tracks her spending

Chan says the single most important action she took to pay off her student loans quickly was tracking her spending.

Instead of relying on an app, she spends five minutes every evening reviewing her online bank account, and writes down everything she bought that day in a journal.

She says tracking her spending by hand forces her to be conscious of her spending.

“When you track your spending, you have absolutely no choice but to confront all the poor ways that you are spending your money on something,” she says.

She has monthly coffee “dates” with herself

At the end of each month, Chan sits down with a cup of coffee and reviews her budget — this helps her stay on top of any adjustments she will need to make for the upcoming month, so there aren’t any unexpected expenses.

“It really changes based on if I’m going away, if we need a dog walker, if I am going to be using a car share,” she says.