WE ARE DEBT FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I AM DEBT-FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE (except for our house).

This post has been a long time coming but I wanted to wait until I knew the EXACT amount we paid off so I needed to wait for my tax interest statements because I didn’t keep track of how much we were paying while we did it.  I paid off our last student loan on January 5^th  ….except WAIT.  The student loan company gave me the wrong amount and I had to pay off ANOTHER $28.82 on January 22^nd.  UGH- good riddance you evil companies.

And the grand total of money is……

$103, 616.59

In 3 years and 3 months.

How did we do it?  Check out the “Finances” tab at the top of my blog for the whole story or click on these links:  First Emergency Fund  Debt Snowball  The B Word....Budget

We loosely followed Dave Ramsey’s principles.  We DEFINITELY could have paid it off sooner, but we gave in to a few indulgences along the way.  But we still put $2, 656.84 towards debt each month…. I can hardly wrap my head around that.  It actually makes me sick if I think too much about it and so I’m trying to focus on moving forward.

So what’s next?  Lavish beach vacation, new clothes, new lifestyle?

Nope.

We are going to chip away at putting $9,000 more in our emergency fund so we have a magic number of $10,000.

Then we are going to save up so we can purchase a brand new car WITHOUT a loan (gasp!)

And I tried to buy myself a new Coach tote bag… it was tinier than the Coach purse I already have so I spent $20 to ship it back and bought a $15 tote from Target.

Are we easing up a little bit?  Yes.  We spent an extra $100 at Costco this month outside of our normal grocery budget.  I bought Lucas some new clothes that he really didn’t need.  Mike is letting me earn “prizes” for sticking to my nutrition plan every 10 days. 

But ultimately we have GOALS.  I want to put Lucas through college.  I want to retire early and not have to every worry about money.  I want to be able to give Lucas amazing birthday parties and great life experiences without seeing us stressed out.  And that means that we will give up eating out on a weekly basis.  That means I will continue to do a monthly budget.  That means we will still take out cash every month.  And NO, we aren’t getting cable… yet ;)