<prompt> Human: Hello PF! Using a throwaway since Ill include all my financial info I 24m wanted to tell my story to the community thats helped me dig out early so other recent grads and students can get started on the right path early!I graduated in 2013 with 50,000 in student loan debt with a BS in Mechanical engineering. I attended a private college for 5 years which includes 3 mandatory 6-month paid internships. I felt these required work periods were crucial in shaping my immediate post-graduate opportunities. I would highly suggest pursuing several summer internships if this is not built into your universitys program. I had some help from my parents neither are college grads, they had saved approx 30k in my college fund and some academic scholarships which required me to keep above a 3.0 GPA. I took a leap of faith and moved 250 miles from home to a state where I had no friends or family for my first job making 64k. This gave me a really big shovel to dig myself out with, I know. I was hired full-time by the 3rd company I worked for while I was still in school. It is a fortune 500 company. 6 months after I started, the site went through a major restructuring and my schedule was changed from M-F 8-5 to a rotating 12 hour shift schedule. Although this took away half my weekends and forced me to work days and nights, I was eligible for shift premium pay approx 500 per month in addition to regular overtime pay approx 450 per 12h shift covered. I worked like a madman and threw everything I made at my student loans.I felt very burnt out after a year of shift work and overtime so I applied for a promotion to a daylight position. This increased my salary to 73k but I am no longer eligible for OT or shift premium pay, so I am making a little less overall than when I was on shift.My current budget looks like this:Monthly Take Home - 4000Total Monthly Expenses - 1688Rent - 500 live with GFInternet - 40Cell - 70Car payment 275 9k left 2.45Car Insurance - 70Food - 500Gasoline - 100Electricity - 125Im still mostly living like a college student. I dont make many purchases over 100 and we dont take extravagant vacations. I see my 20-something coworkers buying BMWs, renting 1500month apartments, and having 30K weddings. I would like some of these things eventually, but I am striving to be in a place where I can pay cash for a wedding, cash for future cars, and live within my means. This year I hope to pay off the rest of my car note - 2012 Mazda3 that I bought new before graduation and fully fund my Roth IRA. I have always put 6 into my companys 401k which gives me the entire match. In the next couple of years I want to build a 60K downpayment for our next house. I feel like too many people my age, good careers or not, are putting the cart before the horse and are putting themselves in huge holes before theyre even 25. tl;dr: Paid off 50K in 2 years by working my ass off, living like a college student, and living well below my meansAssistant: Northeastern?Also, I think living below ones means is huge, because when youre taking this kind of money away from a job you can live below your means and still live incredibly well if you can appreciate the little things.Human: Drexel University  <response>: Drexel is expensive as shit. I live in the area and some people I know who went there have a massive loan. Its quite scary. I feel like 50k of debt is a decent deal for an engineering degree and co-op experience from Drexel. Sounds like it helped you get a nice paying first job after all.I almost went there actually since I received scholarship money. But I felt like if engineering wasnt for me and I couldnt maintain the GPA for the scholarship then I would be totally screwed. 