Getting Close

The end is very much in sight for us with credit card debt.   We’ve come a long way.   Three years ago, we had nearly $40k in business start-up debt,  about half  of it on credit cards (the rest was loans at about 7 – 10% interest).   We now owe $1911 to Discover Card, but with almost no interest (we paid 78 cents in interest this month).   That’s it.   The only other debt we have is our mortgage.   I’m twitchy with anticipation for the day that we send in our last payment to Discover.   It truly feels like we have been in debt forever.   Prior to three years ago, I had never been in debt in my life.   My husband had a $500 credit card debt and a car payment when I met him, but that was it.   Neither of us were accustomed to debt.   And thankfully, we never got used to it.   It never felt comfortable – we hated being in debt.   We had a well-thought out plan for our business, and knew that we could make it work.   We knew that the debt we had was not a result of dinners and movies and Jimmy Choos, but it still sucked.  
With virtually no interest on our outstanding balance with Discover, it makes more sense to just pay that debt down slowly, and put the money into retirements accounts.   But I don’t care.    We want to get back to a debt-free existance (not counting the mortgage)  as quickly as possible.   By the end of the summer, I want that debt to be gone.   Then we can work at paying the mortgage down.   Our goal there is a bit more relaxed.   We have a 30 year mortgage, and we’re in our 5th year of paying on it.   We’d like to have it paid off in about 10 more years.  

We’re going to send $400 to Discover next week, and the plan is to send in $500/month until August.   It feels so good to have such a short, concrete timeline for this.   Living with debt for three years will make it that much sweeter when the only place we owe money is for our house.     Another bonus is that we still have our business.   It’s going well – we’re making a profit of about $55k/year doing something we enjoy.   So the debt that we’ve been paying off for the last few years was for a good cause.   Just the same, I’ll be really freakin glad to be rid of it!