Millennial who paid off $68,600 in 3 years started with this book

When Guen Garrido graduated from UCLA in 2007, she had $40,000 in student debt. By the end of 2014, her total debt had grown to $68,600, thanks to a car loan, a few personal loans and credit

card debt. But three years and three months later, the San Diego-based millennial had paid off every cent.

After making the conscious decision to tackle her debt at the start of 2015, the first thing Garrido did was dive into the personal finance resources out there: books, podcasts, articles and

even videos on YouTube.

She started with personal finance guru Dave Ramsey's bestseller, "The Total Money Makeover," which helped her take control of her money and come up with her plan for getting out of the red.

While reading Ramsey's book, Garrido decided too use his "snowball method" to pay off everything. With this strategy, you prioritize your smallest debts, regardless of interest rate. For

Garrido, that meant starting with $50 she owed Target.

The idea is that you'll appreciate watching debts disappear as you would watching a snowball grow bigger and bigger, and that will help you stay excited about the process. As Garrido puts

it: "Psychologically, when you hit the smallest one, you're winning."

After paying off her credit cards, she moved onto personal loans and her car loan before eventually tackling her biggest debt: student loans

While some experts recommend the avalanche method, which minimizes the amount of interest you're paying overall and, mathematically, is the most efficient way to handle debt, researchers for

the Harvard Business Review found that the snowball method is actually the most effective strategy.

As Ramsey writes in "The Total Money Makeover": "You need quick wins to get fired up. When you start the debt snowball and in the first few days pay off a couple of little debts, trust me,

it lights your fire."

Don't miss: Here's how one millennial paid off $68,600 in just over 3 years

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