I ‘Crushed’ My Student Loans in Record Time. (Free Rent Helped)

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How much student debt can you amass, and how quickly can you pay it off? The internet is littered with testimonials that take these questions to the extreme and that ostensibly offer hope to deeply indebted graduates:

• “How I Paid Off $90,000 In Debt In Three Years.”

• “This woman crushed her $30,000 student loans in 2 years.”

• “How one 31-year-old paid off $220,000 in student loans in 3 years.”

A Washington Post article published on Tuesday offered a marked departure from the standard literature, chronicling all the ways that minimum payments on one woman’s student debt weighed on her mind.

Robert Kelchen, an assistant professor of higher education at Seton Hall University, said the Post story stood apart from other narratives about student loans in its specificity, notably with the mention of the income-based repayment plan.

And about those stories that seem to exalt borrowers who pay off their loans quickly, Mr. Kelchen asked, what’s the rush? “If you have the ability to pay off loans that quickly, you can just go refinance them on the private market and get a lower rate if you have to,” he said. “I am a lot more concerned about, ‘Can people make the standard monthly payment?’ than the outlying cases of people who just want to pay off their debt very quickly.”

A cataloguing of those tales of swift repayment does reveal the extreme measures some people will take to pay off their student loans — though sometimes with a heavy dollop of cluelessness. In several cases, the subject of the testimonial has sizable advantages not available to your average borrower.

A 2017 Business Insider piece told the story of Ebony Horton, who had racked up $220,000 in student debt and yet managed to pay down that sum within three years. She read books on personal finance and committed to changing her life. That also involved moving from Washington, D.C., to the economical (by comparison) city of Joliet, Ill., where her parents gave her and her husband a condo.

Unsurprisingly, the condo helped.

Instead of living in the space, the couple moved in with her grandparents and rented out the gift condo. Soon, they added to their real estate holdings all while living rent-free with family members. The article says that at one point, the couple put off paying car costs to focus on the student loans. “You have to stick with it,” Ms. Horton said. “You have to be willing to make some very drastic sacrifices, and you have to be creative in the ways that you produce extra income.”

In December 2017, the website Moneyish ran a piece about a Geneva College alum named Phil Risher who paid off nearly $30,000 in student-loan debt within a year of graduating despite making only $48,000. How did he do it?

“The biggest way Risher lived on $500 a month was by moving into the basement at his dad’s house, which meant he didn’t have to shell out money for rent, utility bills, or lots of food,” the article stated.

And Mr. Risher said his “lower middle class” upbringing may have better prepared him for an austere lifestyle. Often these tales of doubling down on debt extol the virtue of working hard while subsidizing rent costs.

Becky Freeman paid off her $30,000 in debt by working a full-time job and two-part time gigs. She also lived with her parents, who covered her rent costs and cooked for her, as USA Today described in its college section.

“I’m not going to lie, I felt sleep-deprived often,” she said. “But living at home helped. I didn’t have to worry about grocery shopping or cooking for myself. My family support system was essential to pulling it off.”

Stephanie Hood laid out in Forbes how she went out about chipping away at $90,000 in debt. Her methods included finding a roommate, cutting cellphone costs, or going out less. Of course you can stretch a dollar only so far, so she took on odd jobs such as babysitting and serving on a mock jury.

And an enormous salary bump probably played a role. “During this process,” Ms. Hood wrote, “people at my company noticed what a hard worker I was, and I got five promotions, increasing my salary by $20,000.”