WE'RE DEBT FREEEEE!!!!!

I know. I can't believe it took me this long to post this either.

It's sad, but our largest debt (other than our mortgage) was my school loan. I did a lot of traveling during college (including two semesters abroad) and probably lived above my means for a lot of the time. The result was a pretty hefty bill that I thought would follow me forever. Before Dave I had hoped to have my school loan paid off before the kids were in college (and that was without any thought to whether or not we'd have other debt, like our car). Then when we first started Financial Peace, I was thrilled at the idea of trying to get it paid off by the time the kids STARTED school. At the beginning of this year, my goal was to cut the loan in half by the end of the year. As the year went on, we started to realize that we could probably pay off the school loan by the end of the year. Even at the beginning of this month we were excited about the idea of a 3 paycheck July because we thought we would be able to be debt free by the end of July.

Then, a couple weeks ago, I had about 6 hours of driving time to think. We had strayed from Dave and tried to "jump start" our full emergency fund by putting away about $500 each out of the last 2 bonuses. We also had a car repair fund that we had started with about $150 in it, a gift fund of $100, etc. I started thinking about how easy it would be rebuild those funds once we were debt free. We still have 2 more bonuses this year and I have a lot in accounts receivable for my business. That got me thinking about my business... I have been saving about 20-25% of each payment to put toward supplies and taxes. What if I used that money to pay debt instead? (I'm a sole proprietor, so I can transfer between accounts pretty easily without too much mess) So, I did some calculations when I got home and figured out I have enough in current accounts receivable to pay my taxes. It would mean no "pay checks" for me for a little while, but who cares... we'd be DEBT FREE!!!!

So, this past Friday we pooled a bunch of funds and set up our final payment of the school loan. WOOOOHOOOO!!! The payment cleared on Monday, so it's official. We called and e-mailed Dave with hopes of some day being able to give our shout out on his show. To our great delight, we got a call to see if we wanted to be on this weeks show. REALLY?! Of course!! We will do the interview on Thursday and the show will air Friday night at 8pm Eastern on the Fox Business Network. It should be uploaded to hulu in 2 weeks, so I'll post it here when available. See... it really is possible! It really CAN work!