When Naseema McElroy completed her Masters in nursing in her early 30s, she was set to make a good living in the Bay area, where nurse salaries can reach well into the six figures. She also expected her remaining balance of her $186,000 in student loans to be paid off in a decade, under a student loan forgiveness program.

Fast-forward three years to 2015, and she couldnt seem to get ahead. Something clicked, she said, it is this $1,900 a month [Im] paying to student loans.

She came to the realization that she would have to put her life on hold for the seven remaining years before the loan forgiveness program kicked in. Even then, it mostly would have just covered interest, based on the peak of her payback plan. The pay off didnt add up.

McElroy paid off nearly $1 million in debt in just over two years by figuring out what she could ... [+] live without.

This thought set her down a path to pay off all of her debt, which at the time reached nearly $1 million if you include her mortgage, in just over two years. Using a mix of her real estate, the flexibility with her job as a nurse and some tactical strategies to reduce her costs, she has managed to free herself from the debt.

With nearly 45 million Americans living in student loan debt and the average person having $38,000 in any kind of debt, excluding mortgages, the pull to rid oneself of the monthly payments is strong. But its more than that. In a survey, TIAA and the MIT Lab found that 73% of respondents said that the student loan impact has forced them to put off maximizing their retirement savings, while one-in-four arent saving at all due to the debt load.

For those that seek financial independence (FI) or want to retire early, the ability to get rid of the debt as fast as possible, in order to start funneling cash into savings is step number one. For McElroy, her debt strategy has allowed her to save nearly $200,000 in the two years since she became debt free. Heres how she did it.

Unloading Her Inconvenient Home

Living in the Bay area will naturally come with some large expenses. Among McElroys debt load, more than half came from the $575,000 she owed on her mortgage. Not many would be willing to give up the home in order to pay off the debt and it wasnt originally part of the plan, she said.

But then she started to evaluate her experience with the house. It wasnt in a convenient location, creating an almost hour commute. On top of that, it wasnt close to her family, making it difficult to see them on a regular basis. Not to mention, all the extra costs that come with keeping up a home. In the end, she felt it made more sense for her to list the house, use the proceeds to pay off the rest of the student loans, and then rent elsewhere.

After selling the house with about a $100,000 profit, she paid off the remaining student loan debt. Between selling her condo that she rented out in L.A. in 2015 and listing her home, she was able to reduce her real estate debt exposure by nearly $650,000 while earning about $200,000 in profit.

As for housing, she eventually settled in Oakland, renting a house. But she convinced her landlord to allow them to sublease the basement, cutting her rent by 36%.

The Pay-Down Plan

The student loans, however, were the last piece of her debt that McElroy paid off. She had taken out a 403b loan in order to afford the initial down payment on her house, along with a car, which she still owed about $25,000 on and some other personal debt.

McElroy paid off her smallest debts first, finally finishing off her student loan debt after the ... [+] sale of her home.

When she sold her condo, it was these payments she first paid off. She chose to go that route, before attacking the student loans, for two reasons. First, shes an acolyte of the snowball method to pay back debt, attacking the smallest one first. But she also struggled with the notion of the student loans, since she was part of the loan forgiveness program.

What changed her mind? In 2016 and 2017, her income kept growing higher, which meant her payments had to increase. I only saw the payment getting higher and it felt stifling, McElroy said.

With basic math, she realized her average payment would mean the program would only forgive the interest. She could avoid the interest by simply paying back the loan. From 2015 to 2017, every extra penny went to the loan. By the time she sold her house, she only had a little more than $19,000 left to repay on the student loans.

Nursing Provides Her FI Flexibility

Since paying off her debt, McElroy has launched a podcast, Nurses on FIRE, where she explains tricks and tactics that nurses can use to expedite their financial independence. Shes taken her own savings efforts to the next level, increasing her total savings to about 10% of her $2 million FI goal.

But she also explains that her career allows her a level of flexibility to increase or decrease how much she wants to work, depending on whats needed at the time.

There are so many ways to maximize my income, she said, by either increasing her shifts or adding another job, like filling in for nurses that have left on maternity leave.

Working three days a week, it also allows her ample time to grow what she hopes becomes bigger revenue streams with her blog, Financially Intentional, and podcast. But she doesnt worry about the retire early notion of FIRE.

Instead shes tackling ways that she can scale back, increase her hours, travel abroad or other tactics open to nurses.

Theyre strategies shes testing and pursuing, since she doesnt have to worry about a large payment accruing interest due at the end of each month.

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Heres How This Nurse Paid Off $1M Of Debt In Just Over 2 Years - Forbes