Living On $118K A Year In Philadelphia | Millennial Money

Roy Patterson, 31, lives in Philadelphia and earns a base salary of $118,000 per year managing a team of project managers at Cigna. Patterson was able to pay off over $55,000 in student loans just before his 30th birthday. Now that he’s paid off all of his debt, Patterson is focused on saving for the future.

This is the latest installment of Millennial Money, which profiles people across the U.S. and details how they earn and spend their money.

Read more about Roy's budget breakdown here

There was no silver bullet to pay off the loans, which his parents co-signed, he says. Instead, he lived ultra-frugally, throwing every extra dollar toward the debt each month. While he will earn close to $150,000 this year, he paid off his debt while earning between $61,000 to $90,000 per year.

He was inspired by personal finance expert Suze Orman, and “The Suze Orman Show” became appointment television each week for him and his mother when he was still living with his parents in Connecticut.

Mother and son followed Orman’s advice together, holding each other accountable to pay off debt — credit card and car bills for his mom, student loans for Patterson — and get the rest of their finances in order. While his parents provided a stable home for him and his siblings growing up, Patterson says, as immigrants from Jamaica they didn’t understand the nuances of the American financial system. Watching Orman’s show taught them how money works in the U.S.

“I told my mom, If you do it, I’m going to do it. And we made this pact,” he says. “We would share our wins, we would share our successes. If we failed at something or we felt like we could do better, we shared that as well.”

Using advice from Orman and Patterson’s own internet research, he decided to use the snowball method of debt repayment: He paid off the loan with the lowest balance first, and then moved on to the next largest loan, and so on, until all seven federal loans and five private loans were paid off. He credits part of his success to Orman’s no-nonsense attitude and advice, adding his reverence has become something of an inside joke. “My friends call me Mr. Orman,” he says with a laugh.

He doesn’t regret the years of cost-cutting now that he’s debt free, although he occasionally wishes he hadn’t made quite so many sacrifices. He skipped a family trip to Jamaica because he didn’t want to buy a plane ticket, and he doesn’t want to miss out on experiences like that any more. Some things, like vacations with his loved ones and, of course, the P50, are worth the expense.

“I worked with my mom, and the joy that she has in her life now, knowing that she’s also debt free, makes me realize that what we did works,” he says. “It allows us to live the life that we wanted to live.”

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Living On $118K A Year In Philadelphia | Millennial Money