No I actually didn't. That is really awesome you were able to do that and stay on the ball when the extra money came in. I can't imagine waiting 5 years with no improvement in my financial situation. I honestly could guarantee 5 years ago I would have given up hope of using those skills to be successful and try to find something new.
More details: It was tight for about 5 years. $300 for discretionary spending? That sounds about right. Without IBR my payment would have been $330, with IBR it was $120, but I still tried to pay more when I could. I always had a roommate, I drove a cheap car, I very rarely ate out, and I worked OT whenever I could just to have a little extra. In retrospect it helped a lot. I found MMM shortly after getting a higher paying job. I had been living super tight for years, I suddenly had some disposable income, and here was MMM telling me I should stick to that tight budget and save the new income. Living that tight for years put the FIRE behaviors in place.
I would say that is very much on the mustachian if not extreme mustachian end. I am not sure if you include food and gas etc. in discretionary spending or the $300 was entirely a budget surplus but either way to spend half of that on student loans is very rare. You got lucky to make more money without having any new expenses(I.E children) and get through it, but many people(myself included) did not understand frugality, or didn't believe it's possible. Even in your case, IBR meant that you could have been paying almost all of your available investing money on student loans, and unless you got a raise(which many people do not) you could have been doing that for half or more of your working career. How much more could you have saved without student loans? Could you have started your own business? More aggressively looked for a new job? Maybe even saved enough to move to a new city where income was higher?
When I say you are thinking from a privileged standpoint, I mean that you only look at things from your worldview which happens to be the one of a success story due to early understanding of frugality, other personal qualities such as patience, and the success of both completing a degree and getting a higher paying job in the future.
I am biased in my worldview as well(when I say MOST Americans, I am thinking about the people I interact with, which are 25-34 year old, non-college graduates), and that view is starkly different than yours. I couldn't even finish college, my loans would only cover half of what school actually cost. So I was stuck making minimum wage until I could figure out away to go to community college part-time etc. I had no understanding of frugality, my family was actively wasteful(which is why they couldn't take out Parent Plus loans for me) and most of my friends relied heavily on their parents to pay rent etc. I was absurdly wasteful, I actually would actively live paycheck to paycheck. The mentality to spend until your balance is zero is a lot more common than you think. There are a lot of people just like me out there. And as you may have noticed, these problems work in tandem, each one exacerbating the effect of the other until I had to completely rewire my brain to just have a chance.
I think it's important to be specific on what I am talking about (thanks @shuffler for calling me out on the vagueness). So here let me be sure to cite everything I am saying. Most young people are not taught an even basic understanding of finances.
https://youth.gov/youth-topics/financial-capability-literacy/factsIn 2008 only 28% of youths could understand a simple interest rate calculator.
High school seniors only scored an average of 48% on a test related to financial literacy.
70% of highschool seniors go to college but only 2/3rds graduate
https://lendedu.com/blog/college-dropouts-student-loan-debt/This puts these people in a position of making less than you did, with even less chances of finding a higher paying job in the future.
The difference between someone with "some college" and a graduate is $16K/year.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cba.aspBut you have to get to that 25-34 year old range to make $35K a year and I would assume most 20-24year olds without degrees make minimum wage of $15,010/year.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/10/upshot/minimum-wage.htmlHow many of these people are there? Try 1/4 of all millenials are in this situation. That is from my worldview, the situation seems to be getting more and more dire each year with each new class.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/24/students-would-drop-out-of-college-to-avoid-more-debt.html The Federal Reserve estimated that the average monthly student loan payment increased from $227 in 2005 to $393 in 2016.
The same person that you were in 2008 would now have to put $240/mon towards student loans. Could you have eaten on $60/mon for years?
But to continue on with the generic millenial that has a 50% grade in basic finance. 19.6 million people have been to college and dropped out for various reasons in the millenial age(25-37).
https://hechingerreport.org/federal-data-shows-3-9-million-students-dropped-college-debt-2015-2016/Making some assumptions, these people made 15,010/year from the time they were 21 till 24 so $45,030.
In the same time period a generic graduate would have made (assuming they make at least the average for the whole age group) $29,770 from 21 till 24 so $89,310
These people still have student loan payments that compound interest but about half the income to pay them.
It gets even worse when you look at the ability to pay back at 25-34 years old with/without a degree.
Average dropout will earn $315K over that time vs degree holder which will earn approx $459K.
So you will have approx $180K extra to pay off these loans vs about 20 million people in your age range.
It took you, someone who naturally leans very frugal, 5-7 years to pay of these loans. Now imagine you had made poor decisions along the way, like having a kid, or buying a new car, a new house etc(Or things you can't control like medical illnesses, family emergencies). How many more years would it have taken you to pay these off?
And I use example because this is pretty close to where I am, but things have gotten drastically worse since you graduated. Graduates now are getting paid the same as what you made at 21 where as the average student debt has gone from $20,000, to $29,000. A massive increase that means even if they were just as frugal as you, would still take 7-10 years to repay for same generic degree. And that is assuming nothing goes wrong with the economy, which it probably will since we are having the longest growth in history.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-student-loan-debtYou definitely benefited from the economy continuing to grow, most MILLENIALS cannot afford a $1000 emergency. Your situation was not the best but you were lucky nothing terrible happened. Most millenials cannot afford anything bad too happen(this time I brought the citation lol)
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/19/60-percent-of-millennials-cant-cover-a-1000-dollar-emergency.htmlIf the economy were to dip for this new generation(which of course it will in the next few years), they could be stuck with paying off the same degree you have for 10-15 years instead of 5-7. And again this is if they budget everything as well as you did which we all know doesn't happen for most Americans of any age.
And I agree that student loans can be paid by being more frugal(thanks for giving me a little more hope) and mustachian but some people don't make enough for it to matter and that $330 gap that you had is disappearing. Many people now cannot afford to even make IBR payments. So they are just stuck with this debt forever. People are desperate to get out from under a loan they made as a near child and they could be stuck with forever. The whole point of mustachianism is too be free from debt and own ourselves so we can find happiness. Most people want this and if they don't have the knowledge or the room in their budget to pay off these loans, we really shouldn't be surprised they turn to a dark method of becoming financially independent. Before we condemn them I think we should really sit and imagine having a bill that could hound you forever, prevent you from getting car loans/mortages etc, make you pay more interest on everything, and in many cases you will not be able to get rid of it for over a decade even if you do everything perfectly, spending wise.