We are so excited!!

No, I'm not in labor, but I'm still really, really excited. We just made our last credit card payment ever, meaning we are now officially credit card debt free! We started out in August of 2007 with 25,000 (yes, THOUSAND) dollars in credit card debt. (Luckily it's been 0% interest the whole time, but still...) With my paycheck today, I submitted the final online payment of $600, so we have a credit card balance of 0! YAY! We will never, ever use credit cards again (well, except to book flights or hotels, but we will only book them after we already have the money in our vacation fund, and that money will be immediately transferred to pay off the card).

I am so glad we got smart about our finances after we got married. I read this book called Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey, and it was an awesome kick in the pants. I honestly don't even know what most of that 25k went to; useless, stupid purchases, probably. (Well, except for our 6k honeymoon to Paris; I'm not going to lie, I would charge THAT all over again; it was an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I don't regret charging that, especially since Dan was still in school when we got married so there is no way we would have been able to save up the cash for that.) But everything else? Stupid, stupid purchases. I'm glad we're no longer paying on things that I can't even remember what they were for!

We just sat down in August of 2007 and created a budget and found that even with budgeting with entertainment and vacations, we could still put a sizeable amount towards our debt, which helped. Once Dan got a "real" job after college, we were really able to accelerate the payments towards our CCs, even with still budgeting for entertainment and vacations. (Dave Ramsey's advice is to not use CCs ever, because even though people say they'll pay them off every month, they rarely do). So we paid cash for everything, and once that $$ was gone, it was gone. The minute we got paid, I'd take our "snowball" amount, as Ramsey calls it, and immediately apply it to our credit cards, so there was no temptation to spend it. I cannot believe that we were able to pay off $25k in two and a half years; if you had told me that back in 2005 or 2006, I would have said, "Nah, there's no way." But we did it; yay!

Next up? We'll pay off my car. It's currently got 15k left on the loan, and isn't scheduled to be paid off until May of 2014. But with using our "snowball" amount that we put towards our credit cards each month, we should have it paid off by February of next year--over three years ahead of time! Then it's on to student loans... but I'm just going to take it one step at a time. I feel so great right now; I'm so proud of us! :)