Michelle Schroeder-Gardner, 33, is not your typical mother. She has found incredible success with her personal finance and lifestyle blog, Making Sense of Cents, to the point that she doesn’t need to work at a 9-to-5 job anymore.
Her successful blog gives advice on financial products, how to get started investing, and other money decisions.
On her blog “About me” page, she says that she and her husband are full-time travelers. They recently finished living in an RV while touring North America, and now they live on a sailboat.
Her passive income streams have made this lifestyle possible. However, she did what many Americans do by going to a traditional college and taking on a lot of student loan debt.
Her Background: Education and Student Loans
As a 22-year-old, she was working as a financial analyst for a valuation firm and earning about $40,000 a year with student loan debt from going to an expensive private college. She finished her Bachelor’s degree in only 2 and 1/2 years with two business degrees and honors in 2011. She says that she then went to the University of Missouri-St. Louis for a Finance MBA in 2012 and took on even more student loan debt. (Source: Making Sense of Cents)
According to her blog, Making Sense of Cents, Michelle graduated with about $20,000 in student loan debt, from her Bachelor’s degree, and then after going back to school for a Master’s degree, she then had $38,000 altogether in student debt, and took on a mortgage (a house loan) with her boyfriend in 2009. That is a lot of debt. (Source: Business Insider)
Any American could tell you that it would be very difficult to live on $40,000 a year and pay off almost $40,000 in student debt while also trying to pay on a house mortgage. It would be nearly impossible at this income level.
Despite the student loans, she was able to develop her personal finance and lifestyle blog (“Making Sense of Cents”), which helped her achieve…
