While most of us love to eat out with friends and family or drown our sorrows with a bit of retail therapy, these expenses aren't always necessary — and eliminating or reducing them could actually take you one step closer to being debt-free.
"It's the small changes that add up," Anna Keisler of SG Financial Advisors in Atlanta, Georgia, pointed out. "Maybe you cut back $50 from eating out and put the money toward your loans each month?"
Keisler also said that if you're going to make the sacrifices to cut back on your expenses to pay off your loans quicker, you should be "making sure the extra money goes toward the principal payment each month — you're going to see the amount of your loans decrease each time a payment posts."
She explained that the less principal there is, the less interest will accrue before you make another payment.