I initiated the big debt payoff click yesterday for an online payment to our credit card. I anxiously logged in this morning and saw the glorious $0.00 balance due. It didn’t hit me yesterday, but it has definitely hit me today after seeing that balance. I’ve been known to sometimes forget to hit the last confirm payment button, so I had to make sure before announcing on here.
WE ARE CREDIT CARD DEBT FREE!!!
After 38 months of pinching pennies, increasing our income and riding on the roller coaster of debt reduction – we have finally come to the end of the credit card ride. We are no longer a slave to them. We are free now…and it feels…wonderful.
I feel like I can stand up straight since our credit card debt isn’t pushing us down. A huge weight has been lifted. At the same time, there is a feeling of “What’s next?” We’ve been at this for over three years. You really do get used to a routine and now things will be shaken up. It will definitely be a period of adjustment. With change comes some fear but a lot of excitement!
You may be wondering what we did with regards to our savings. Due to a payment that is taking longer than expected to get to us, we ended up pulling $1,499 from our savings account to make our debt payoff a reality. We should have the money by the end of the month but I didn’t want to cut things too close – I wanted to be debt free by our goal date of May of 2009. As soon as that payment comes in we are going to put it straight towards our savings.
We first thought we would do something grand when we paid off our credit card debt, like splurge on a family vacation (we have yet to go on a vacation with the three of us). After thinking about it, we are going to hold off on that and simply have a pizza party to celebrate. We need to get more money in our savings before we do anything big. Perhaps next year will be the year for our vacation. We’ll see how things go.
I’d like to thank everyone for reading. You have helped to keep us accountable for our financial decisions and without your support I’m not sure if we would have kept going at reducing our debt like we did. You have been here for the rough and sometimes very sad times and helped to keep my head above water during those times. I’ve said it many times before, but words cannot begin to express my gratitude. If I was writing this on paper…you would see little tear drop outlines all over it. I was okay with writing this post up until I thought about all of you and then the waterfall started. Thank you all so very much. You have helped us to make it to this special day.
As things sink in a little bit more, I’ll share with everyone our plans for the future and also take a look back at our journey. While we won’t be using credit cards anytime soon, there are some advantages to credit card which can be found at creditcardsguidance.com.
I am excited to be starting the next (credit card debt free) chapter of our lives 
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About This Site
My Debt
- Original Debt: $97,293.06
- Paid: $1,927.89
- Remaining: $95,365.17
- Emergency Fund: $1100
- Broken Down
- Line of Credit 2: $0.00
- Line of Credit 1: $0.00
- Credit Card 1: $0.00
- Credit Card 2: $245.00
- Credit Card 3: $405.00
- Credit Card 6: $1,785.00
- Credit Card 7: $2,381.17
- Consolidation Loan: $11,000.00
- Credit Card 10: $14,519.00
- Auto Loan 1: $16,093.00
- Credit Card 11: $23,873.00
- Auto Loan 2: $25,064.00
Finance Blogging Buddies
- Beachgirl’s Budget Blog
- Becoming and Staying Debt Free
- Boston Gals Open Wallet
- Debt Free Hispanic
- Debt Kid
- Debt Reduction 101
- Dual Income No Kids
- Everybody Loves Your Money
- Financial Hack
- Free Money Finance
- From the Brink of Bankruptcy
- Generation X Finance
- GRACEful Retirement
- Grad Money Matters
- It’s Your Money
- Josephsangl.com
- Kick Debt’s Butt
- Lazy Man and Money
- Low Income Life
- Make Love Not Debt
- Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge
- Mighty Bargain Hunter
- Money, Matter and More Musings
- My 1st Million at 33
- No Credit Needed
- One Million and Beyond
- Personal Finance Advice
- pfblogs.org
Nice! Way to go!
But don’t stop yet — try to maintain the momentum while you’re instead building wealth!
A BIG CONGRATULATIONS from another lurker. Your self-discipline and perseverance are inspiring.
Congrats on this great accomplishment. In this day and age, its huge. Keep focused on your next goal. I’m glad to hear you are celebrating as I believe that we should always celebrate our victories.
An awesome accomplishment! Congratulations. Thank you so much for sharing your journey with us.
Congratulations!!!!
Wonderful! Can’t wait until the day I can post that on my blog:)
I am so happy for you. I remember when I paid off my last bill after being $60,000 in credit card debt. It is really an awesome feeling isn’t it?
Congratulations!!! I have just started on my journey of paying off debt and hope to be successful at it. Hoping that keeping a public blog will keep me motivated and maybe I will get tips from readers of the blog.
Congratulations! I started my journey more eight months ago and have paid off merely 5K. It is very difficult, more difficult than I thought.
congrats. that was the best investment you could make. thats a guaranteed 15% return on your money!
For your student loan debt you might want to ask your current lender if you qualify for the student loan forgiveness program. Just google it.
Congrats. The biggest think I have to overcome is thinking I’m missing something by staying home and not spending Money. I’m proud that I’m at least lowering my obligations every month. However it is only about $100 a month. I would like to gradualy increase that. This past year, I did manage to get my obligation from $9,400 to $8,000, but then the hot Water heater imploded, and I’m back to $9,400.00. I’m determined to pay this off or at least get it to a few grand 2-3 and pay it off with tax return or large commission check. The caution I have is I have a Washing Machine and a Dish Washer that is about ready to be replaced, one is 10 years old, the other is 20 years old. My bed is 15 years old, and lasts only 5 years, and frankly it’s ready to be thrown out. I’m defering these costs as long as I can, but lets face it they will all need to be replaced sooner rather then later. So any extra money may have to be deferred to these long overdue product replacements.
I meant to be here earlier…
Yea for you….
Great job. I also just recently completed a debt relief program and I must say I am happy I did. I am now debt free. No more credit card payments to make. It took me 36 months to do so but it was well worth it.