How I made >$100k and paid off my college loans by graduation

Found my passion in the process, but highly do not recommend.

Rachael Annabelle
3 min readNov 21, 2022

Growing up, I remembered watching movies where kids would “save up for college”. At that time, I barely knew what college was — but saving up to pay for something so exciting in your life (or at least how Hollywood glamorized it) seemed like the cool thing to do. So, I told my parents that I want to pay for my own college too.

In reality, it was a lot less cool than it looked.

Reality looked like waiting in line at a bank to get slapped by a ~4.8% interest on the loan.

Too late though, I had committed to looking like a cool kid and at some point realized that if I didn’t want to be burdened with a debt after graduation, I needed to pick up some side jobs.

I remember taking up part-time jobs the moment I was legally allowed to at 16 years old. By the time I turned 22, I had done about 22 odd jobs / internships.

Given, I learned a ton of life skills and made a bunch of great friends, but not all of these jobs were great.

I rolled bagels at a bagel house, washed bathrooms, learned how to be a barista, bartender, and waitress at a mexican joint. I burnt waffles at gelato stores, cut fruits…

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Rachael Annabelle

knottedbrains.com | googler. founder @gullie.io. photographer. creative consultant. pasta fanatic & occasional nerd.