<prompt> Human: Today marks the day my wife and I make our final payment on her tuition. How much was the loan? 0. When she decided three years ago that she hated her job, she made the life-changing decision to apply to graduate school. She worked her tail off to get the proper pre-requisites and since we were both working, the expenses werent a big deal.We moved in with each other the day after we got married, so we had all the typical expenses any average couple does. With dual-income, we were saving, in the beginning, for nothing in particular. She decided to pursue a career in Occupational Therapy, and got into a program at a private, all-medical school in our area.When you put private and medical in the same sentence, dollar signs start popping up, and not in our pockets. We decided to make the sacrifice no married couple ever wants to make. We moved in with my parents. Luckily, my parents live 15min away from the school. We are still here, but now we are saving towards a house. Living with my parents is not necessarily fun, but I managed to make it work. I made compromises with my parents and we converted one living area for us and I stripped my childhood room. It was harder for her than it was for me since it was the house I grew up in. It was saving us nearly 20,000 a year in living expenses alone. Her tuition was 3000mo, not counting gas, food, etc. I made another decision, sacrificing time, our most valuable asset in civilization. On top of my day job I took on two more jobs. Each job is luckily related to my profession so the pay was good, just a lot of driving and time out of my hands. I was determined to fight off the prospect of having to take out loans. I was determined to be loan free. My wife kept telling me after some 80-90 hour weeks that loans arent that bad, everyone has loans, it isnt a big deal, stop working so much. I even managed to start my own part-time business through it all and it has become successful in its own right.I am a social studies teacher, and consider myself a student of economics and saw a lot of my friends working, earning decent money, but with the buying power of an 18 year old high school graduate with the mountain of graduate school loans on top of undergrad loans they took on to get a competitive position in this economy for my generation. All of them were having fun, living in apartments in the city, putting down 1-5 on a house and calling it their home, and just in general doing the things couples our age are expected to do. Not to say we eliminated fun all the way, we did cut back on the amount we were going out and just sticking around home, or finding less expensive activities to do with our friends. For vacation time, we only picked places we had a friend to stay with. We also were helped by a small amount of inheritance part of which started our retirement savings Roth IRA.I gave up buying my electronics, and have been making modest repairs on the laptop I write on which has lasted me for 6 years. I also have been slowly upgrading my desktop and repairing it which is almost TEN years old. Luckily, growing up in a tech family has allowed me to keep this sucker running.I also got a new job in the past six months which has been tremendously helpful in the home stretch in not having to take out the ludicrous non-subsidized loans for a graduate student. Thanks Obama.If we took the route of living on our own, with only me working, she would have graduated with over 100,000 in student loans. We would have been paying that back for 15-20 years, and would have totaled around 175,000 total with the interest. It is funny to write it, but with the amount of money we have saved in living expenses, and interest, totals well over 100,000.Im not stopping there either, once she secures employment in her profession, which has a 0.9 unemployment rate in the United States yes, UNDER one percent, we are looking to save up at least a 20 down payment on a home. Ive seen too many of my friends put down a meager amount, having to pay PMI and have a much larger mortgage, I want to own some of my house, otherwise why did you buy a house? Just to rent from the bank instead of a landlord? I find that silly.Thanks to those of you who read my entire essay, for those who didnt...TL;DR- Married, chose to live with my parents, chose to work 60-90 hour weeks, and saved over 100,000 over 2 years for the sacrifices we made.EDIT: I havent been on rpersonalfinance in awhile and I finally got a chance to read what Triumphant Thursday was about! I apologize for unintentionally going away from the experiment. I do hope many of you have gained some hope through my story that achievements such as this are still possible.Assistant: Nice work--you did it right based on the resources at your disposal! I do have to say that moving in with your parents is technically a financial sacrifice for them. There seems to be a millennial mentality that moving in with parents is a sacrifice to the one receiving free rent, and is mostly been looked upon as an expectation and security blanket. In fact youre just being handed thousands of free dollars akin to a windfall or inheritance. This is not a luxury most adults and families have, and I dont consider it practical financial advice except for the younger almost-adults with parents in the upper-middle class.What would you have sacrificed or what different decisions would be forced to make if you did not have the thousands of dollars your parents gave you in free rent, or family inheritance? These are the stories I find most practical--those who self-fund or borrow to get ahead.Also, put this in triumphant thursday!Edit:Grammar.Human: You have a valid point. I offered to pay rent and utilities and my parents refused. What would I have done? I suppose I would have had to take loans like most.  <response>: You did the right thing based on your situation--no one can knock you for that! Im sure others in their 20s without kids will certainly be able to relate to this story, but most of us will not. 