I almost cried while reading this. <virtual hug to tomreece). I'm 27 too and hitting my 5th year in software. Last year I worked in a company that had 20 employees; 10 people were related to dev. Everyday in there was a slog. Shipping code was a convoluted affair that happened once every 45 days or so. Testing was all over the place, and in a bid to do "excellent design" there were classes connected to 5 levels of interfaces and abstractions and multiple circular references.

During that job, I made and shared two side projects for the first time in my life.

But the 9 to 5 hell was impossible to deal with.

Fast forward to now, I'm remotely working with a company that pays me a great salary. I live in South East Asia and that means my savings are fantastic. Bonus is that the company is amazing. Dreamt of joining it since 2012. But I digress.

Here's where I get to the point. Try and find this kind of remote work, and come live around here for a short while (Sri Lanka). Heck. I'd be happy to talk to you about it. Put it in perspective, with a salary of say 80k USD, you'll pay off your student loan in one year guaranteed if you live a little frugally. Hope this helps