It feels like it’s been forever, but we are finally debt free! We have paid off our student loans, credit cards, and even a car loan we had to take out. It feels fantastic to just have our mortgage as our only debt. With this freedom comes a new responsibility: handling our money carefully and figuring out what financial goals we want to accomplish next. Truth be told, this next era scares me more than the debt repayment period. When we were in debt, we had concrete numbers that we knew we had to work towards. It was easy to look up balances at any time and see how much we owed. Those goals were tangible, and easier for me to work towards than an unknown goal. I think now we need to create new goals that have numbers attached to them so that we’ve got that same financial focus. I feel overwhelmed in the fact that I’ve got so many things that we could be saving for: retirement, replacement cars, emergency fund, future kids, paying on the mortgage, etc. [...]

The last time I updated this, I owed $12,333.78 on the student loan. As of today, the current balance owed is $11,899.22! I am happy that it has fallen below the $12,000 mark! I got paid a quarterly bonus and put most of it towards the student loan. Also, I have paid off the Home Depot Credit Card that had 0% for 12 months before the promotional period expired. Ultimately, I’d like to pay off this student loan before the year is over, but that seems like a pretty hefty goal, so I’m going to go with 2 years, or 24 months to have it paid off.

I decided today that I was going to calculate my net worth because I had never done so. I was surprisingly astonished when I received a net worth of $37,337! This took into consideration myself and my husband’s information, but I was really expecting to be in the red! To explain our financial situation a little deeper, I am still in my early 20s and my husband is in his early 30s. We both make a decent income for the area of the country we live in. In fact, we earn almost twice more than the median average household income for our state. We own our own house, have a first and second mortgage, both have Roth IRAs, I have a 401K, and we’ve got a nice chunk of savings kept in a high yield savings account at ING. We both work full time as managers in our respective fields, I work in finance, and he works in the food industry. I was pretty shocked to see the number come up that was displayed. We’ve had a little bit of [...]