Today I just mailed a check to pay off the MINI Cooper I bought a couple years ago. That was the last of my debt. I am in the black and I Don’t Owe Nobody Nothing!
It took me a little over 6 years of concerted effort to pay off the rest of my credit card debt borne of horrible spending habits, school loans (though I had been making regular minimum payments 4 years prior to that) and car payments.
Damn you man, go buy something right now! How dare you purport to be a contributing member of society without owing someone an outlandish sum of money.
I have never eaten at Mama Bears even though they are famous, I never got around to it. I go to the chinese restaurants usually, try Great Taste Buffet on west 3rd street sometime, or Mandarin Buffet over by Kmart.
Yeah, I was going to say that a mortgage isn’t the same as something like students loans or credit card debt because the interest is tax deductible and the principal is equity.
Not quite sure how long it’ll be before I’m finally out from under the shadow of student loans… probably depends on how good I am about making extra payments. Recently I’ve been following the advice about putting extra cash towards the retirement fund, waiting until tax time, and then making an extra loan payment with the tax break from the retirement fund contributions. Or at least I’ve been trying to…
Something else to spend the money on always seems to pop up around March.
Congratulations. I am working toward the same thing. I should be debt free in 3 years if nothing nasty happens. That will be the start of me saving cash for a house. Not even sure where I want to live right now. Wife and I talk about it sometimes, but no descisions yet.
I was debt free for at least five years or so, until my (paid-for) car finally died. Now I’m tethered to a car payment again, dammit. But I’m throwing a lot of extra money at it, so I should have it paid off well ahead of schedule. Of course, by that point, I’ll probably have a mortgage…ah, well. Enjoy it while it lasts, I guess is my point.
Now, save fo ra few months and go buy yourself a mortgage. That’s what I did and it’s pretty cool. I like to feel “normal” and be in debt like everyone else
I will pay my last credit card payment this month. Then I attack the car loan and student loans and hopefully we will also soon be free. The goal then is to save up what we were making in payments so that we never have to take out another loan again! I am sick of watching all our income go to payments on everything.