Master plan to get out of Debt in 3 years

Moneysaver02

Hi Everyone,

I am new to this forum, so let me introduce shortly:

I am 28 years old, live in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and have a bachelor degree in Business Administration. I gratuated in the spring of 2014 and am working fulltime now for 4 years.

I currently work as a financial reporting specialist with a big multinational and earn around EUR 48K, which is around 59K USD. Pretty decent you would think, but now comes the problem:

- Due to a gambling addication and structual overspending I have build up the a big debt. When I was 18, unfortunately I won a local poker tournament in the casino for 14K. After that, I also had some online succes. This made me think that poker was a perpetual money tree. As you can guess, it was not. In the following years, I started losing with poker and eventually quit. But my spending habits dit not stop. This has lead to my current debt:

EUR 7K to credit and bank debt. Recently I re-financed this debt (my parents paid it off and took over the debt).

EUR 40K college debt with 0,9% yearly interest (fixed for 5 years, then will probably go up a bit. Luckily the interest is very low.

The 7K debt to my parents will be paid off in the next 5 or 6 months.

Than I go start building wealth (or paying of my student debt).

How fast would you pay off the student debt. I am considering to invest 1K a month (that is my monthly surplus) into a EFT tracker fund with low risk. So in 1 year I can put away 12K, in 3 years 36K. If I can make 3% yearly return on this money, I would have around 40K after 3 years, which is enough to pay off the debt.

What is your advise in this? The interest on the student loan is so low, so I tend to look at better opportunities. I am obliged to pay off a monthly 250 EUR, so thats 3000 EUR a year.

Do you have any advise about my plan?

cajef

You would be better posting this in the The Debt-Free Wannabe board of the forum.

Brynsam

Better still, see if there are any debt advice agencies in the country where you live. Some principles apply to pretty much all countries, but there may well be differences which people on a UK site don't know about.