Blue-Collar Astronaut

NOTE: This achievement is semi-missable. If you don't focus on it early on, your debt and interest may get to the point where you can't earn enough money to effectively pay off the loan. This may require an in-game progress reset. Fortunately, this achievement isn't tied to the 'One Hundred Percent' or 'done did everything' achievements, so you can complete everything else and focus on this last.

This achievement is for completely paying of one of your loans (not to be confused with paying off one of your credit cards, which is much easier).

The first loan you receive in the game is for $35,000. If you keep playing the Driver Ed Courses, you will eventually pick up the Master's Loan, which is $15,000 This is the loan you will focus on paying off.

After each successfully completed mission, you will see various deductions and payouts, based on your efficiency on the level.

There will be a loan fee that is deducted during each level that pays towards the loan, but it is such a small amount that it doesn't really have any impact.

Instead, you will focus on collecting money (the green 'cash' counter at the top right of the screen) which you can use to manually pay on the loan in the menus.

Keep in mind though, if you do poorly enough in a level (get deductions for fuel and repairs as well as the designated 'expense' for the day) you can get negative cash for the level.

The best method to earn cash quickly is play the 3rd stage of the pizza delivery set on Easy mode. You only need to deliver +3 pizzas to pass the stage, but you can deliver 20 or more if you are good enough (and lucky enough). The payout can be $100+ per attempt.

Once you have saved up a decent amount of cash in this manner, go to the menu, select the loan, and put all the cash towards it.

The pain in the ass comes when you hit a daily expense (pre-determined) that is really high and can wipe out your cash savings. Specifically, there is an expense called 'Medical' for $500 and and expense called 'Shelter' for $1000. Luckily, the pattern of expenses follows a set pattern (which I included below). If you know when the expense will hit, you can simply cash out before these expenses show up.

Here is the list (Doesn't start with day 1, but this is the order they show up in. Once you figure out what day you are on, you can just follow along at that point. It will then loop around)

-Sewage - $20
-Vehicle Insurance- $84
-Heating- $50
-Planetary Bowling- $57.74
-Food- $49.18
-Garbage- $23.00
-Nebula Nibbles- $81.80
-Electricity - $114.09
-Holofilm Screening- $57.74
-Parking Fees- $20.00
*****Shelter***** - $1000 (pay on loan before playing this level)
-Food- $49.20
-Phone- $50.00
-Internet- $50.00
-Jake's Diner Tab- $81.80
-Vidja Games- $57.74
-Food- $49.18
-Water- $42.00
-Clothing- $144.35
*****Medical***** - $500 (pay on loan before playing this level)
-Soap Opera Direct - $57.74
-Food- $49.18

Also keep in mind that certain items in the store may reduce the amount charged for some of the deductions (i.e food), but in doing so, it will charge your credit and increase your deductions for credit and loan payouts.

I am personally not a huge fan of this meta-game, and it feels a little to 'real-life' for my taste.