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When Matthew Burr finished his master's degree in 2011, he figured he owed about $50,000.

But he was in for a surprise. "The number was almost $15,000 more than I'd previously estimated," he remembers.

Between the $65,000 from 18 months working on a master's degree in Human Resources and Industrial Relations from the University of Illinois School of Labor and Employment Relations, and about $9,000 remaining from his undergraduate debt, he was nearly $74,000 in the red.

"I wasn't going to be one of those statistics where the loan balloons to $150,000 with interest," Burr recalls. "Right out of grad school, I got a job as a human resources manager at a paper mill with a starting salary of about $80,000, plus a sign on bonus and relocation. I didn't even wait the six-month grace period to start paying off my loans."

In 2012, he managed to repay more than $42,000. The next year he paid off nearly $27,000, and finally, this year, he paid back the remaining $5,000.

In two years, 31-year-old Burr was completely free of student loan debt. "I paid a grand total of $4,913.69 in interest in 23 months, saving thousands of dollars over the next 25 years," he says.

How did he do it? Below, Burr shares 17 tips that helped him pay off his student loans.

1. Don't ignore the debt. "Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it will magically be repaid for you," cautions Burr.

2. Read the fine print and know the repayment guidelines. "I read through my grad school loans after the fact and owed nearly $15,000 more than I expected," he recalls. "You need to know when your payments are due, how much the minimum payment is, and how much you plan to pay each month before you sign."

3. Be prepared to sacrifice in order to meet your goals. Burr recommends setting a timeline of how much you'll pay, and then doing whatever you must to stick to it. "I own a TV that's 15 years old," he says. "I don't have an XBox or Playstation, BluRay DVDs, or VIP cable. I don't have the $200 a month cell phone plan. I didn't go without by any means, but I set my goal and knew I needed to make the sacrifice for a few years."

4. Keep your contact information current. "The first thing I did when I graduated was go online and change my address from student housing to my new home on my credit cards, banking, and student loans," he says. "Most things will probably be emailed to you, but you don't want to miss something in the mail when your college email is turned off."

5. Make more than minimum payments every chance you get. "I was paying almost four times the minimum payment because it was important to me to achieve the goal that I set," remembers Burr. "I looked at the student loan site every day and watched the interest accrue, and the more I knocked the base down, the less I would pay in interest."

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Matthew Burr 6. Start paying immediately. If you can, don't wait for the six-month grace period to end to make payments, advises Burr. "As soon as I got my first check, I made a payment. You'll pay less interest if you start making payments in a hurry, and it gets you into a routine. If you're disciplined up front, you'll be far ahead of everybody else."

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