Getting out of debt

Woohoo!
I just wrote the check for the mortgage that will bring our balance down to under $20,000!!! (Granted its still nineteen thousand, but its under twenty!) I am excited!

I love paying off debt.

I get giddy and really happy when I get to do this.

And.... I haven't been able to do this for awhile so I am really excited to be closing the gap on one of our two final debts.

I remember the excitement (just like now) that I had when I paid off our first student loan. It felt so great to be dropping that check in the mail. In fact, (I normally brought my mail to the office to mail it from there instead of making a trip to the post office), and I remember bringing that envelope and announcing to my co-workers that it was my final check to pay off our student loans. That announcement was met with a small round of cheers from my happy co-workers who could understand my excitement.

A few years later we bought some new vehicles and we had been saving up for quite some time so we were able to pay all three vehicles off within a year. (We had intended on paying cash at that point for car purchases, but HADN'T intended on purchasing THREE within a six week period, so we didn't have enough saved to pay for all of them at once. I paid the first one in cash, then had to carry some debt for about 10 months or so  (which wasn't so bad considering one of the vehicles was supposed to generate income for us, but that's another LONG story itself that I'm not going to go into  that here). But suffice it to say, I was excited to be able to be debt free from car loans. In fact, since that time (2004) we have not bought another vehicle without paying for it 100% in cash.

The reason I share all this background is to explain why I am so excited to FINALLY be able to pay off (or get close to paying off) some debt. As you can see we didn't have any more 'small' debt to pay off. Only our mortgage and a business loan remained. So we have been working to pay these off for about seven years, and now it is almost upon us. Now I am getting giddy with anticipation because we are just around the corner from becoming MORTGAGE DEBT FREE!   YYYIIIIIIIPPEEEEEE!!!!!!!  I am really looking forward to writing that last mortgage check and dropping it in the mail. I LOVE the feeling of doing that, and as you can tell I am excited for it to happen. I guess I'm even more excited about eliminating this debt, than others, because its been almost 7 years since I've been able to write one of those "final checks", and I'm also excited because its our mortgage! Which obviously is typically a "forever debt"  or one that you normally can't get paid off till you are very close to retirement. And even though my husband keeps trying to retire  ;)    we aren't retired yet, so this is pretty cool.

I share all of this to hopefully provide inspiration to those reading this, that it CAN be done. Put your mind toward tackling any debt you have and work on it whole-heartedly. Don't get caught up in spending all your money, it is much wiser to save it (which also happens to allow you to not get into as much debt, i.e. you can pay cash for purchases instead of getting loans for them).

Our society has gotten us into an economy right now that makes it even more difficult to carry debt, which is all the more reason to be frugal, so that you can survive with these tightened job markets and increasing gas prices. The less debt you have, the less money you need to make ends meet, which is very helpful if your income decreases due to this economy.

Proverbs 22:7 says "Just as the rich rule the poor, so is the borrower a servant to the lender".

Try to be debt-free so that you are not a 'servant' to your debt.
Interest is the biggest waste of a resource in my opinion. I hate to pay interest on something, because I look at that interest charge and think of all the things that I could have bought with that, if I wasn't paying it to a company on debt. I guess its just ingrained in me to feel this way, because it really bugs me down deep. I know not everyone feels that way (but those people usually also wind up living in debt, because the interest doesn't bother them. They see it as a cost of living.) I don't see it this way. I see it as a waste of money. But before I dig too deep into that portion of this topic, let me get back on track and just say how excited I am. If you don't know me personally you may not know that I am definately a 'debt-free mentality' person. This blog has talked a lot about finances but hasn't had many posts on debt. I've found some interesting blogs that follow people's path to becoming debt free in their lives. If you would like to read that type of "hands on, how do I do it too" type of blog, check them out. They are listed below.

http://www.superpositron.com/
http://www.adventures-of-sam.blogspot.com/

And who knows, maybe I'll finally start making some more blog posts about debt and share ideas on how you can avoid it and get out of it faster :)
Until then, have a great day, and follow my motto "If you can't afford it, don't buy it!"
P.S. charging it on a credit card is 'affording it' ONLY if you pay that credit card off in full every month ;0