Burger Financial Diet Towards $0 Student Debt

We’ve all heard the growing concern over increased tuition and the massive amount of student debt. It seems everyone is asking how are you supposed to get an education without taking debt for the rest of your lives? This is my families story of how we graduated without debt. You may be wondering, what does a “burger financial diet” have to do with this? That is our story about sacrifice, the hard times, and what we did to make it work for my wife, Breanna and I.

(Image credit: First We Feast: The Most Expensive Burgers in America — https://firstwefeast.com/eat/2014/03/the-most-expensive-burgers-in-america)

I’m going to preface this with the fact that we’ve made choices in our lives, my career, and where we have lived that have allowed us to accomplish our goal. We’ve made sacrifices and lived our lives to allow us to achieve financial independence from student debt. This is by no means the only way to accomplish $0 student debt, but it’s just one way that we made it work. I also recognize that this won’t work for everyone. My hope is that you can pull something from my story to help you on your journey to financial freedom.

Our story begins monetarily in a net negative situation, -$23.67. It was 2009 and we were a newly married couple. We were trying to survive without the help of our parents. We didn’t have careers, kids, or a house. We did have one pre-paid cell phone, a used car and a bunch of ‘stuff’ that we took with us from our earlier lives. I was devastated and financially immature, having fallen into a scheme by the bank to allow us the convenience of overdraft (with a $20 fee). Working at a call center making $10/hr that didn’t always give 80 hour work weeks placed us on a wobbly financial balance board that never seemed to be in our favor. I felt like a failure as a husband. Like many, we were young and we didn’t have any credit. We had a bank account that was net negative, literally $0 to our name until I got paid the following week. We had rent due plus utilities and the bare minimum to survive. We did have a few things of value to help us get out of our hole, so we turned to eBay to make quick cash and help us survive these few weeks. We sold a cell phone, clarinet, saxophone, hunting bow and a few school books. Between this and my check, we were able to pay rent, utilities, other bills and have just under $5 for two weeks worth of food.

Let’s take a side path for a minute to discuss some essentials that have always been important for us and continue to this day:

• Health insurance — Early on I participated in our health insurance program at work, which was not paid. It took a lot out of my two week check. Today, I’m fortunate to work for a company that has sponsored health insurance program that I utilize.
• Credit Cards — We were just not financially savvy. We knew that we’d get into trouble. The temptation was just too great, so we’ve avoided it entirely. This decision has worked for us to this day. Some financial gurus will argue against this, but we’ve made this decision and continue to stick by it.

Back to our journey. Our shopping list for the next two weeks: 12 Top Ramen noodles at $0.32 each.

This is where our financial diet begins. That’s all we ate for brunch / dinner (couldn’t afford to eat breakfast and lunch) for the next two weeks. Eventually we expanded out to Cup-O-Noodles at $0.48 each for three meals a day and continued this for about two months.

Something had to change! We just couldn’t survive on that as a family. We couldn’t do anything. Financial struggles are a large cause of divorce in the United States and it was straining on our relationship. Our marriage was important to us. Breanna and I made the decision that she would go back to school at a local community college, where she applied for a federal loan and was approved. This was a pivotal point and started us on the path to success. That federal loan was a few hundred dollars more than what she needed to pay for her tuition which gave us a few options we didn’t have. That’s when we started to look at other ways to improve our finances. We moved out of the house we were renting and into a small apartment in a not very good part of town. This was the next big break and saved us $200 a month on rent. Because of the closing agreement and deposit + first months rent on the new apartment, we were again low on cash, but in a much better position.

We were running out of ramen and patience, so we headed to the store with around $30. After looking through all the aisles and weighing our options, we found a box of 50 frozen burgers for $20. With buns and ketchup (couldn’t afford anything else) we went home to finally add some protein to our diet. That first burger was the best tasting, juiciest, flavorful thing I had in a long time! I can vividly remember the way it smelled and the sound as it sizzled. That was the morale boost we needed. This new found diet on only burgers gave us an idea. We decided we’re going to stick with these, and only these, until we can get a few thousand dollars saved. The burger diet was born!

I decided around this same time that I’d like to go back to school. I had a passion for learning about computers in general, but didn’t really know much about them except what I was exploring. The seed had been planted by my brother-in-law and father-in-law about IT work and I wanted to learn more. After a few months of saving I entered school again at the same community school Breanna was at. I wasn’t sure if college was for me. Breanna was a big part of my success with encouragement and her own passion for learning. The first semester back was eye opening for me from many areas, but especially financially. We didn’t have enough money to pay out the semester, so after talking about different payment options with the school, we settled on monthly payments.

Another detour! I want to point out and recap on some life changing decisions we learned during 2009/2010:

• Live within your means — where you live. We originally rented a house. It was bigger than we needed and in an area that was ok for us. While the rent for it was low for a house, it was just too much for us. We sacrificed some luxuries and moved to a very small apartment. It was in a really bad part of our town and there were many nights when I worried about our safety. Looking back, I know those people that lived in that area were also just trying to live their life's and wouldn’t have done anything to harm us, but ignorance isn’t always bliss…
• Live within your means — entertainment and food. We couldn’t do anything. We didn’t eat out or go to the movies. We didn’t go on trips or get the latest/greatest of anything. We didn’t have cable, internet, or a regular cell phone for that matter. We literally ate ramen and burgers for months to build up a meager savings. We walked to the school or library for internet access. We survived and learned a lot about us during that time.
• Avoid going into debt if you have the option. We took out a small loan for school under Breanna’s name. We paid monthly for my semester of school. We didn’t have a choice in the beginning, we had to take out a loan, but we only took what we needed, which was the smallest option available. After discovering monthly payments, we’ve done this every semester for the past 10 years! Breaking up payments allowed us to budget responsibly and ensure we are paying off our education up front. We paid off that loan within 1.5 years from the date it was taken out.
• Community college is a great place to start. Whether you believe in a formal education or not, community college is a great place to get your start. Some of us didn’t do so well in high school. Some of us don’t have the skills or even initiative to try for student awards/loans/grants/scholarships. And some of us just don’t have the financial means to go to a larger school with the history and pedigree. But community college doesn’t care about any of that! The teachers are passionate about their students because they live in the community with you. They want you to be successful. While you don’t get the prestigious name behind your degree or certificate, you get a name from a school that you know did their very best to truly help you, which is something you can’t always get at a larger school. I think it’s often missed that you can also use community college as a spring board to get into the college of your dreams. Utilize these resources!
• You don’t have to be a full-time student. Colleges have a way of pushing you into a path that may be too accelerated for you. In our case, we just didn’t have the money to pay for two full-time student’s tuition. We rotated who would do more classes each semester, which just happened to work out perfect for us. This took me a while to learn, but don’t worry about what others think about you taking more years than it “should” to get your degree or certificate. In the end, you’re bettering yourself and your surroundings.

We continued our education at our local community college until we both graduated with our associate degree in our areas of interest, me computer science and Breanna’s in medical science. We did what we could in our community and knew that we needed to get into the larger world.

After spending time and learning valuable life lessons, we moved to the larger city and applied the exact same routine we perfected earlier. Breanna would first start college and work on the side, while I began my career in IT. We found the absolute cheapest place we could find and moved in and we continued our financial diet, with an occasional reward along the way.

My career started to take off and I would resume my education, while we continued to live within our means as we moved into an apartment closer to both of our schools and work. It was very difficult paying for two tuitions at the same time, but we accomplished this by paying monthly.

We finally started to make progress financially and accomplish some of our life goals. Breanna would graduate with her bachelor degree in public health and we purchased our first home in 2016. In 2017 our son was born and shortly after I obtained my bachelor degree in information technology. I eventually went on to complete my master degree in cybersecurity and we would be able to purchase our dream home in 2020. We successfully graduated without student debt! There were occasional bumps along the way, and I’ll fully admit some luck to our path. I firmly believe that we were able to accomplish both us graduating without student debt because we were very strict with our core principals.

My hope is that you’ll be able to apply some of our lessons to accomplish your goals. Shooting for financial success is possible with hard work, persistence and good sense along the way.

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Afterthought — If you choose to apply the burger diet, make sure to stay healthy and work out. While it is great for your wallet, its not so great on your waist!