Paid off our car loan in March (our anniversary gift to ourselves), paid off the credit cards several months ago and have kept from reopening or using any. Looked recently at old bills and realized that we paid off over $7000 in credit card debt in a year. That’s insane… and I’ve really no idea how we did that with our income being lower than we’d had. But the universe was clearly being good to us. Have been using Mint.com and SmartyPig to budget and save money for goals (including the “everyday” things like car insurance. That’s another place where things lined up very nicely and worked out… I stumbled upon both of these, did extensive research into both and then took the leap of faith that has paid off VERY well. Been using both for almost a year now and we’ve paid off so much debt, put money aside, and have a better handle on how much we need for a monthly income. And the other bonus of paying this stuff down – our required bills dropped by about $1000 over the last year.

Will have medical bills and the remainder of our consumer loans paid off in the next month or two, which leaves my student loans as the only remaining debt. Those are gonna take a lot longer since our income has dropped, but the interest rate is something like 1.2% so we’re going to pay the minimum and put any extra into SmartyPig (@2.15% interest).

It’s gonna be so nice to have all of that done. Hopefully we’ll get into the hang of our newest budget by the time that G’s unemployment runs out and we have to get by on even less. Right now we’re still adjusting to income at different times and working out a new bill payment schedule. And continuing to wish for Washington state to move from a sales tax (the most regressive tax there is) to an income tax system. Gotta have a dream.