Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon took seven years from buying a share of her first investment property to owning her family home outright. For every year since I have deplored debt. And I mean deplored. Okay, scene set. With your indulgence, and with your interest (quite literally) at heart, I'd like to get personal and share how I turned my ingrained aversion to debt into outright home ownership, by age 36. We used our partnership In all things financial, having a partner to split the bills with helps free up a bunch of money for the things you really want from life. It just does. So take solace singles that things can get easier. The wonderful Mr P-McK and I – he's actually the "McKinnon" part, if you're curious – have been together since we were teenagers (and that's Free Kick No.1). He hates debt as much as I do – and loves travel …

We cashed in on currency At age 22, the second I had one year of finance journalism experience under my belt, we moved to Britain, where I quickly picked up my dream job: working for the Financial Times. The thing is it's every nerd writer's dream job, so they paid me in "prestige" rather than a big salary. Even so, a pittance of pounds converted into Aussie dollars became a princely sum (and you still do all right today). We saved and saved for the decade we were there (managing some travel too). We bought with family Though we eventually amassed a 20 per cent deposit – recommended because it avoids extortionate lender's mortgage insurance – what we still needed to borrow for a small apartment in Sydney gave me apoplexy. So my Lovely Sister-In-Law offered to go halves with us as an investment (Free Kick No. 2). We hired a lawyer to draft a water-tight co-ownership agreement, spelling out the financial deal including how we would value the property if one party later wanted to buy out the other. We made our half-mortgage repayments, as well as paid 50 per cent of the market rent to Lovely S-I-L, qualifying her for investment deductions; the latter was far less than the former. The money this freed up to shovel onto our loan made it well worth losing the homebuyer's grant she had previously claimed. We fixed it

Being the cautious cats we are, and because I judged rates would rise, we fixed half our loan for three years. To fix more is actually risky; what if instead rates fell (which even from here they could)? That meant the impact of the seven rate rises over the next 2.5 years was minimal. Meanwhile, we swam as fast as we could under the water to discharge the variable portion, the only bit you can usually overpay on. It was gone by the time the fix finished, and we then went variable for that remaining half so we could pay it down fast as well (as, Free Kick No. 3, rates began falling). We structured the loan right For a book I was writing on busting out of debt (naturally), I modelled the impact of running an offset account in parallel with a mortgage – and saw Pure Power. Money you hold in such an account is simply offset against your loan so if you have a $100,000 loan but $10,000 in an offset, you pay interest on $90,000 only. It basically lets you use every dollar twice – for its purpose and to save interest. This loan structure is far better than an all-in-one or redraw-style of loan because you can't accidentally go further into debt; you can have multiple offsets named for their purpose so can't get money mixed; you have ultimate flexibility to access the money whenever you need it (including if you lose your job, when a bank might freeze redraws); and making additional repayments into an offset, rather than your loan directly, means your property can still work as an investment if you decide later to rent it out – you've never technically paid it down. We scrounged every cent and put it into offsets, as well our salaries, using a credit card for monthly expenses and shifting money out of the "mortgage" only as the interest-free period ended. We ignored a whole salary I was an editor by now, here with Fairfax Media, and finally earning decent money (Free Kick No. 4). But I didn't want to count on that being long term so we made hay while the sun shone, paying every dollar I earned into our offset. We also put even more deadline pressure on ourselves; debt-freedom before we had kids. Like I said, I find it abhorrent. My gorgeous son was born when I was 34 but – problem! – he was soon having a sister and the apartment, albeit now (half) ours, was tiny.

We arbitraged property prices For us, the numbers of relentless Sydney house prices AND two kids AND trying to earn enough to even meet a large mortgage repayment, let alone exceed them, didn't add up. So we took the decision to move to the coast – specifically, the beautiful Sunshine Coast in Queensland, where prices had fallen dramatically during the credit crack up. From there, I could retain the parts of my work I loved – writing and television commentating, and fulfil my long-term desire to launch a financial literacy program in high schools; my husband's app development company, appfactory, could easily relocate. Our share of the Sydney property sale (Lovely S-I-L was happy to sell up too) netted us $100,000 in profit (Free Kick No. 5). So at age 36, I feel proud and privileged to say we had enough in cash for our five-bedroom house*. We saved roughly $1 million on a similar Sydney purchase, which buys a lot of cheap airfares back to the big smoke. Last but not least Until we beat that first loan, we did economise big time. We scrimped and saved, virtually never bought anything other than groceries and said "no" to a lot of invitations. It probably helped that for some strange reason I can't stomach coffee. And we were fortunate to receive several lucky breaks along the way. But we used each one to our advantage and worked the system to squeeze out every debt-reducing dollar.

I hope something of what I've confided makes it easier – and cheaper – for you. * We still took out a small loan and simply filled the offset to the brim. That way, we can always get at this chunk of money for emergencies or even to buy a house elsewhere, converting our now-home into an effective investment property. Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon is a finance author, commentator and educator, and presents Smart Money Start in high schools around Australia. themoneymentorway.com