Wow, I just had this EXACT experience over the weekend. My partner and I have gobs of student loan debt (now in the $20k range). ER is the eventual goal (or semi-early retirement, anyway), but getting out of debt is the short-term goal we're shooting for. Last month we threw almost $3k of extra income at our loans, all due to a ton of PT/OT work -- something we worked very hard for and were ridiculously proud of. We're making a ton of sacrifices to pay off our debt and are steadily approaching zero.
Anyway, I told this to a family member on my partner's side of the family, because we sometimes talk about student loans and how much they suck and how hard they are to conquer. (They took out PLUS loans for their daughter, no retirement, have tons of debt, will "always be in debt," in his words.) Like an idiot, I expected said family member to be happy or at least a little bit congratulatory. Nope. Conversation went like this:
Me: "Oh, hey, [family member], did I tell you we put away $3k toward our loans this month?!"
Him: Oh, yeah, I heard about that. That's ... great."
End conversation.
Meanwhile, he insists it's impossible and unrealistic for people to pay off debt. It was almost like he was annoyed at me for bringing it up. Learned my lesson!