10 ms·

I think the subheading may be a better title -- 'This is the story of how I prepared for a decade to graduate in 3 months.' This seems feasible only for a spec

• astura 6y ago
  Reminds me of every single one of those "how I paid off $100,000 in debt in 1 year" articles. It's always like "dad got me an executive job at his company and grandma gave me a condo as a graduation gift so instead of living in it I moved in with my parents rent free and turned the condo into income stream. (Aren't I smart!?!) Since mom always had a gourmet hot meal prepared for me I could put all my income into my loans instead of silly things like buying food and worrying about preparing meals." These sorts of writings have their audience (I guess) but they aren't written for normal people. What I mean is, normal (or even above average) people can't follow a similar path and get similar results - it's extraordinary people getting extraordinary results.
  • abfan1127 6y ago
    I paid off $240,000 in 3 years by not being an idiot with my money. I got on a budget with my wife. We cut up our credit cards because we always double or triple spent our money. We budgeted for things like Christmas. We followed Dave Ramsey's plan. We're 2 months from paying off our house now. Edit - I went back and checked, it was $140k.
    • kace91 6y ago
      I mean, that's still contingent on having a decent salary relative to the amount of debt - I'm assuming it didn't happen with a couple of ~30k/year salaries.
      • abfan1127 6y ago
        I was a sole provider making under $100k. Edit: salary. We were receiving small bonuses ($10k) at the time. but we learned to keep our expenses down, and every bonus we did receive we rolled right into debt before spending it on stupid crap.
        • wffurr 6y ago
          Something is off with the math here. I don't doubt your story, but perhaps your numbers are a bit off? 240k over 3 years is $80k/yr in principal alone, substantially more with interest. If your post-tax take-home was $95k, that leaves only $15k/yr for living expenses for your household, which is extremely low. Maybe that's possible with a lot of beans and rice, paid off used cars, and second-hand clothes and such. Seems like part of the debt you are paying down is a mortgage, so that means your housing cost at least is part of the $80k/yr debt service. Still doesn't leave much for transportation (often second biggest expense for a household) and the rest.
          • abfan1127 6y ago
            no, you may be right (it was a few years ago). It may have been 3.5 or 4 years. I did receive small raises over the years, but we kept our budget fixed. I did receive a big windfall near the end from a company acquisition ($40k iirc). But at the rate were were paying stuff off, it brought it in ~6 months. The math still shocks me every time I do it.
            • theplague42 6y ago
              So it was really around 100k over four years with the last 40k covered by your acquisition earnings. So 25k a year on a 100k salary (pre/post-tax?). Which is a lot less than 80k a year. Still impressive, and kudos, but let's not pretend that it's anywhere the same. That's a difference of two whole median incomes per year.
              • astura 6y ago
    • jankeymeulen 6y ago
      Congratulations for that! However, you also paid of that $240k by earning at least $80k / year.
    • rfrey 6y ago
      That means you earned more than $80,000 post-tax income surplus to your needs. That surplus is a third more than the US average total household pre-tax income.
      • abfan1127 6y ago
        You're right. But I also changed my mentality. We became intentional with our money. Its amazing how you can find money in a budget to put towards debt. Its also how you stay out of debt going forward. You learn to prioritize your spending.
        • Privacy846 6y ago
          It’s amazing what you can do when you earn way more than the median household.
          • war1025 6y ago
            Yea. You can get $240k in debt. Good luck getting anyone to lend you that kind of money if you're actually poor. Someone who is able to get deeply in debt basically by definition has access to money. They would not be granted loans otherwise.
            • abfan1127 6y ago
              the largest portion of my debt was student loans (over half), which anyone can get in the US (not sure about other countries).
          • greyhair 6y ago
            This is one of the hardest things to explain to people. Here is a thought experiment. Lets assume that the minimum required to live in a given place is $20K. So now you have two people, one makes $30K, the other makes $40K. How much more does the second one make compared to the first? Twice as much. At $30K, you have $10K disposable. At $40K, you have $20K disposable. And someone making $60K is making four times the disposable compared to $30K. Once you get above cost of living, everything gets easier.
    • stevewodil 6y ago
      >by not being an idiot with my money It was also due to the fact that you were making $80k/year ABOVE your living expenses.
      • abfan1127 6y ago
        Living expenses is a flexible item. You learn to keep your living expenses down.
        • doytch 6y ago
          Yes but it's a touch difficult to keep living expenses below $0, which most people in the developed - let alone developing - world would need to do on their salaries to save the extra $80k/year.
          • abfan1127 6y ago
            ha, yes. looking back, I don't know how we did it as fast as we did. we kept our expenses low (20-25k/year low) and poured every dollar into the debt. We didn't live in a fancy house or have new cars (beyond when we got in to it with the new car loans).
        • ChrisRR 6y ago
          Living expenses are only flexible when you have the money to be flexible. If you're on a low wage, maybe with some kids. You're buying whatever inefficient car, low quality clothes that need replacing more often, a house near your child's school. Having that huge amount of disposable income offers you a lot more luxuries
        • pertymcpert 6y ago
          You're being completely tone deaf to the point that its frustrating to believe that people like you exist.
          • abfan1127 6y ago
            tone deaf to what? That some people have big problems? That those big problems may be bigger than mine? That sometimes solutions to big problems are hard? That sacrifice for some isn't the same for sacrifice for others? Or that some people's problems are as big as they are because they fail to recognize the change needed to solve them, or are unwilling to make that change? That often times, people fail to recognize the change needed because it first requires them to acknowledge and take responsibility.
    • Bakary 6y ago
      How much did you tally as living expenses during that period? As a rough estimate
      • abfan1127 6y ago
        it was 10ish years ago, so this is a guess... Mortgage was $750ish water/electric $200 phones/internet $100 food $500-600 fuel $25 insurances ??? $100-200 maybe $1500-2000 a month. $20-25k year in real expenses.
    • cxr 6y ago
      Heads up: this is a common pattern of expression that makes you come off as really obnoxious to people who will never tell you that that's what's happening. If you can't understand why people have a problem with this, here's the explanation: there are almost certainly smarter people than you who happened to be more unlucky than you. You were lucky-but-stupid before, so you stopped being so stupid, and now your messages carry the undertone that anyone else is some variation of the person you were back in the stage before you wised up. It's a view that doesn't provide any space for people who were wise from the beginning. When you say things like what you said above, you're not highlighting how smart you are or getting down to how dumb other people are; you're just highlighting how lucky you were to even have the circumstances where you were allowed to be that stupid in the beginning.
      • fnord77 6y ago
        Do you do social skills coaching? Plenty of tone deaf people (myself included) who would gladly pay for this.
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        • ambicapter 6y ago
          Seriously, what an amazing comment. Imagine if we had someone like this in every discussion on the internet.
      • abfan1127 6y ago
        At the risk of more down votes, I'll disagree with you. There are certainly smarter people than me who are less lucky than me. However, its a much smaller subset than many would believe. Many claim unlucky when in reality their luck is a consequence of their past choices. They've taken risks and those risks didn't work out.
        • war1025 6y ago
          You can only get downvoted on a post to -4, fyi. I stopped caring nearly as much about being agreeable once I learned that. For what it's worth, congrats on what you did. I'm in a similar position and I completely agree that for the majority of people here it wouldn't take anything beyond stopping making bad choices.
    • ChrisRR 6y ago
      What the hell? So you're literally earning $80k above your living expenses. Waaaaaay above average I'd be more surprised if you couldn't pay that sort of money off Re your edit: I'm even more sceptical now. Your figures were off by a third. I know exactly the value of my mortgage when I took it out. That figure is burned into my mind. I don't know how you could be out by $100,000
      • war1025 6y ago
        I don't know what it will add to the conversation, but I thought it was worth adding in my two cents. My family of five is supported by my income (~$100k / year). I get paid weekly. Every Friday, I go into my bank account amd transfer anything in excess of $2000 into the stock market. Some weeks that's quite a bit of money, some weeks it's not so much money. As of a week ago when I did the math, we had $65k more to our names this year than we did one year ago. Probably half of that was money we saved directly, and half was stock market gains, so I guess from a debt payoff perspective maybe that's closer to $30k. But I guess my point is, I don't think it's unreasonable to think a two income household in a higher-income metro than where I live could have $80k/yr in excess income to pay down debt with.
        • alistairSH 6y ago
          It's certainly not unreasonable or even uncommon. But, it's still way above the norm in the US. Median household income in the US is somewhere around $65k/year (before taxes and expenses). Side note - You're only holding $2k in cash for a family of 5? That seems low. Your efforts to invest for the future are commendable, but if you get caught on the bad end of a 2008-style recession, is it enough to keep paying bills?
          • war1025 6y ago
            > You're only holding $2k in cash for a family of 5? I am holding $2k in a checking account. My savings accounts are appropriately sized to get us by for probably six months to a year.
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    • astura 6y ago
      I didn't mean to make this about finance or the ability to pay off debt, it just reminded me so much of the type of writing that is really, really common in "pop finance"-type publications. I wasn't at all saying that I believe that it's impossible to pay off a large debt quickly or that nobody ever does - just that, of course you are going to if you're in such an extraordinary situation. So the entire thing ends up being not very interesting or actionable, yet the title promises that it will be both. I guess there's an audience for it though, because they keep getting published.
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• tmaly 6y ago
  Would it not be possible for a very focused, hardworking individual to take all the course on MIT for free then enroll in this school and finish fast?
  • Cro_on 6y ago
    It's also possible for a amateur jogger to join an ultra marathon and run until they pass out.
    • alisonkisk 6y ago
      College students are all amateurs.
      • varjag 6y ago
        That's why it takes them 4 years.
  • alisonkisk 6y ago
    Sure, but not in 3months.
    • tmaly 6y ago
      Yes of course, but could someone pull it off in 1 year if they take all the free MIT courses ahead of time? College debt is a huge burden on kids these days.
      • alisonkisk 6y ago
        If you study in advance, you're limited by how fast your institution can give you credits. There what OP is about They studied ahead and did 3 years in school. You're usually paying per credit for these transactional degrees though, not per year. College debt is only a burden for scam private schools and people trying to buy their way into the upper class. If you go with community college Associates and public state college Bachelor, it's not a huge debt burden to get a degree. The time spent studying (not working for money), and paying to live in your own apartment (instead of supported in parents home) and get fed by the college restaurant (instead of home shared meals) is the main cost.
• bserge 6y ago
  Some people on Reddit did say they completed 2-3 month bootcamps/courses with no prior experience and got junior dev jobs (in the UK), so I don't even know. Then again it's online and on Reddit, so they may be just lying. I believe it is possible to learn enough to be decent in 3 months full time, and then learn everything else as you go. However, I don't see anyone hiring with that kind of experience. But then why pay for a certificate? Four figures, no less. You could go through a bunch of free programming courses in 3 months and print your own certificate, same thing as long as you can actually do a job...
  • bencollier49 6y ago
    That's definitely a thing. Very popular over here. The format is normally that you do a crash course over 2-3 months, and then do a year's on-the-job training as an apprentice.
  • gabereiser 6y ago
    Here in the US we also take a good hard look at bootcamp graduates. Code school/bootcamp graduates I’ve found to be good enough to do most of the mundane web work broiler-plate we have to write. It gives them experience, it give us that broiler-plate code no one wants to write. Bootcamp’s here like Turing or Galvanize cost $20k and take 4-6mos but you’ll get an entry level Dev job at $75k or more when you’re done. It’s been a really good experience. Some have been really good programmers, others not so much. Same could be said of any demographic. There’s performers and under performers.
    • bserge 6y ago
      This is really interesting! What about applicants who didn't go through a bootcamp, but have decent projects on their website/Github/whatever? Is it the fact that you can't verify if they actually built that themselves or just copied/stole it?
      • gabereiser 6y ago
        I’ll be more keen on a candidate that has interesting GH projects and is self-taught than someone without GH and came from bootcamp. But if both have interesting projects, they both are equal as far as candidacy goes. I can only speak for myself. YMMV.
• jacurtis 6y ago
  I agree that this is a much better title. I actually also attended WGU during the pandemic and got a degree over the course of 6 months for about the same amount of money as the author. I came in with 42 transfer credits, so I completed 90 credits at WGU to complete my degree. The degree took me 6 months for about the same number of classes as the author. So I was going about half the speed of the author of this post, yet my speed was still astonishingly fast for my mentor. While you will read about people flying through the program, the norm is to take about 2.5 years. When I first started the program I always joked that I was simply buying a $3,500 paper (the rough cost for one 6-month term). I looked at it as a degree-mill. I had accepted it for what it was. But after going through everything and graduating, I was wrong about that initial assessment. I am actually far more proud of the work I did at WGU than what I did at my official 4-year university back in my mid-20s. I also walked away feeling like I learned more at WGU than at my previous university. Yes, some of the courses are very easy. I was able to coast through them in a day, relying entirely on my previous experience. But this is the same as any other college, there are always 10-20% of the courses that are easy, and you basically just need to show up. The difference is that a normal university would require you to go through the motions for 16 weeks before you can complete the class that you could have passed on day #1. WGU simply lets you take the final exam whenever you want, allowing you to control the timeframe. While I flew about 20% of the classes quickly in less than 48 hours after starting them, the rest took me an average of about a week of full-time work. I was usually juggling two classes at a time. A standard 3 credit college course is supposed to take around 20 hours of in-class time with about equal amounts of studying time at home. So a normal 3 credit class generally takes about 40 hours of work to pass. But it is spread across 16 weeks and you also juggle 4-6 other courses. At WGU you take 1-2 at a time and go full bore until you are done with the course. I find that I was still averaging about 40 hours per course on average, but since I could do it all at once I went through it faster. I also found that i retained the knowledge a lot better. Funny enough, my breakdown is very similar to the author. I would say I didn't even look at the material for about 1/5 of the courses. I skimmed through the material while watching cherry picked lectures for 3/5 of the courses. The final 1/5 of courses I read the text book cover to cover. Basically what I am getting at is that WGU isn't just a "buy an online degree" program. You really need to work for it. I was working full-time on school. Generally 8-10 hours a day during the week and 3-5 hours a day on the weekend. The tests were generally very difficult. Even courses where I had a lot of experience, I really had to slow down for the final assessments. Passing a course requires you to pass two tests. They call them a "pre-assessement" and an "objective assessment". This is essentially a mid-term and a final-exam from any other school. That is generally the only requirement. So as soon as you pass the "mid-term" they will let you take the "final exam", and once you pass that then you are done with the course. You can choose how to spend your time to prepare for these tests. You can spend zero hours or 100 hours on the course. There are lectures (they call them "cohorts"), text books, study guides, practice tests, homework problems, and flash cards provided for each course. You can choose what you want to use and what you don't want to use. You can also look at a course syllabus and recognize which parts you already know and which parts you need to study and then only spend your time on those parts. You go at your pace and you are in charge. Nothing else is required. For this reason you really need to have good time management and self control. Overall I am really proud of my WGU Degree. It wasn't easy. I struggled on several classes, but I also walked away learning far more than I expected. Its also worth noting that at the speed I went, it was exhausting. I really don't recommend it. It is clearly possible, but by the end I was burnt out. I hit full burn out when I had 4 courses left. I really struggled through the final few classes because I had simply gone so fast and so hard for too long. Unless you really need it, I don't recommend cramming this into a single term even if its technically possible.
• graycat 6y ago
  > I just think it would be misleading to imply that this is a path that most people can take. Yes, but if focus just on computing, in that field, there is, long amazing to me, evidence that "most people can" and, in a significant sense, do: I've long been impressed the degree to which the learning crucial for computing in the US has been obtained via self study much as in the OP. Okay, say what you will about an ugrad computer science degree and then move on to graduate degrees, Masters and Ph.D. Uh, reality check: At the grad level, the material to be taught is often not all polished up and instead has rough edges, loose strings, things left unclear, etc. The fundamental reason is that the material, the work, the education, whatever, are supposed to be at the leading edge, or, if you will, the bleeding edge. More, the profs are paid mostly for their research (which for teaching is a path, with some efficacy, of quality) and not having all polished up, with good pedagogy, course teaching. And in Ph.D. programs, and sometimes in Master's programs, the student is expected to write something, original, hopefully publishable -- usual criteria, "new, correct, and significant". So for the work, it's, in a word, new. Right away can assume false starts, dead ends, encounters with brick walls, unpredictable rates of progress, unpredictable results, etc. So, we're back to independent work or, if you will, self study. Main point: In education, self-study is not only helpful but at times crucial. In particular, independent study has been especially important in the US computer industry. So, in a sense, the independent study in the OP is not very surprising. Oh, by the way, the OP mentioned a Georgia Tech Master's degree for ~$10,000. Secret: Commonly high end US research university graduate programs are very short on good students and long on tuition scholarships -- tuition should be about $0.00 for the whole graduate school effort. Evidence: I was a student and a prof in applied math and computing. From a world class research university, I got a Master's and a Ph.D. For the grad degrees, I paid nothing in tuition. Independent study was crucial. E.g., of the five Ph.D. qualifying exams, I did the best in the class on four of them, all four made heavy use of independent study, and three of them making heavy use of independent study before the grad program. E.g., the work that did me the most good in grad school was the independent study with results that were clearly publishable.
  • barry-cotter 6y ago
    > Oh, by the way, the OP mentioned a Georgia Tech Master's degree for ~$10,000. Secret: Commonly high end US research university graduate programs are very short on good students and long on tuition scholarships -- tuition should be about $0.00 for the whole graduate school effort. It’s vastly easier to get into a Master’s than into a grad school programme where everyone is supposed to be aiming at a doctorate. Most terminal Master’s programmes are cash cows. GA Tech isn’t. They just don’t want to make a loss, but the population of people who can get into a terminal Master’s is quite different from those who can get admitted to a Ph.D. And GA Tech’s OMSCS can be completed while working a full time job. Good luck doing that while in proper grad school.
• brundolf 6y ago
  The thing is, 90% of the value of a 4 year degree (at this point) is the credential. I support broad and quality general education, I think it has value, but I don't suggest anyone put themselves deeply in debt for the rest of their lives over it. But to have any shot whatsoever at a decent job? Yeah, maybe. So if you have the opportunity to pay a fraction of the cost for the credential, even if it means teaching yourself everything, that seems like a strategy very much worth considering for many people. It's dystopian that that's where we are now, but it is what it is.
  • dahart 6y ago
    > 90% of the value of a 4 year degree (at this point) is the credential. Why do you say that, and how do you measure value? I have quite a few lifelong friends from undergrad, people I wouldn't have met or bonded with if I'd done school online. And it's not necessary to know people to get great jobs, but I feel like it helps; 4 of the 6 jobs I've had came about through my undergrad network. One of them, as a founder, was partially funded by a prof. I met as an undergrad. My undergrad department helped my education and career in various ways including giving me a scholarship and RA and TA work, and publishing articles about me after graduating. I am not an average case, partly because I went to graduate school, but for me it's safe to say the value of the credential part of my undergrad degree is somewhere near zero. Definitely not zero, but I've never needed the credential for anything but passing the checklist of requirements for my first job. The value I got from my time spent in the 4 year degree is almost entirely from the relationships I formed.
    • brundolf 6y ago
      Do you work in academia now? If so, yes, the story is wildly different for your case. > I've never needed the credential for anything but passing the checklist of requirements for my first job That's a pretty crucial piece of value! For people who don't come from wealthy families, that entry into the college-educated workforce is often the difference between poverty and not-poverty. The networking angle is an interesting one I hadn't considered, though personally, while I made several great friends in college, they and the other people I met there have had little to no effect on my job prospects. The closest thing would be that I went to a job fair while in school which eventually led to my first job, though there are plenty of job fairs that are open to the public (potentially even the one I went to; I can't remember). Of course it's possible I'm not the average case myself and that many people get networking benefits from their college experience; I can't say for sure. > how do you measure value? I do want to clarify that I'm focusing on financial prospects because in today's America, those are quite dark for many (most?) people. I'm not someone who dismisses the value of a real education, or the value of those relationships and experiences and memories. But I've seen several friends who put themselves in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt for those things, and will probably be paying the interest for the rest of their lives, and I just don't think that tradeoff is worth it.
• bsanr2 6y ago
  It's been well known for a while among those who are honest, with themselves and with the evidence, that degree requirements are mostly a cultural gatekeeping exercise for entry-level work. That isn't to say that training and expertise aren't critical, particularly the more responsibility a worker takes on; it's more that one rarely requires 4 years of preparation for a placement that involves work a supervisor that's known you for a month, at best, will trust you with. And the old axiom holds: "The best way to learn how to do something is to do it." A degree does show that you're committed and willing to jump through hoops (even if only because you don't know any better).
• clavalle 6y ago
  So many are in this boat, though; having the chops they've built informally but not having the paper to get in the door. I really like WGU because it focuses on competency rather than time in a classroom. I hope more educational orgs follow suit. That said, my wife, who is getting a Master's in Nursing from WGU, is learning plenty -- but she can focus on the actual learning while testing out of areas that she already knows well.
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• 908B64B197 6y ago
  That tittle would attract less eyeballs. The author sure didn't take any shortcuts to graduate.