Tonight, I realized we had not updated our finanical peace section of our site in quite a while.  After selling the house in Florida, we made major progress, as a Home Equity loan got paid off, wihch was part of our debt snowball.  We are now 72% finished with our debt snowball, with only some small debts left to go.  We think we will be done with step 2 this year.

I am \amazed at our progress considering we moved to North Carolina in the middle of all of this. 

We're attacking our debt again!  We're altering the Dave Ramsey plan a little.  Instead of focusing on the smaller debts first (we only have three besides the house now), we're focusing on the largest one we have now.  I think we're doing a great job so far, as we haven't used debt to purchase anything in almost a year now.

We're back from vacation, and beginning our big addition to our debt snowball.  Round 1 was done over this weekend, Round 2 should be done Monday or Tuesday.  It is a great feeling paying these things off!

Last night I had some awesome champagne.  Whenever something good happens, we like to have champagne.

I know, not very creative.  And last night we had some fantastic french champagne that we picked up at Dorns.  Some of you might be thinking, "Yeah, but I thought you were on some sort of wacky budget..."  We are, but this was a budgetary celebration.  Without going into too many details, I'll just say that we are going to be able to pay off all of our credit cards this month.  All of them.  We'll still have some debt (home equity, student loan, etc.), but we are going to be a year ahead of our schedule in our quest to be debt free.  This makes me very happy.

It has been May since I've used a credit card to pay for anything.

This is the most financially secure I've ever felt in my life, and it has reduced my stress level tremendously.  I never really realized how much we lived beyond our means.  I also never realized how much time I spent worrying about it.  I always convinced myself that I was putting things on credit cards for points programs, or to give myself a little extra time to pay for something.

Now, when payday hits I'm actually excited because we now have a budget.  Before I even have the money I know where it's going.  I know that I'll have enough money for my bills, and that we are reducing debt.  It feels great.  Were going on vacation next week, and not a cent of the vacation is going on a credit card.  We've actually saved the money for the trip!

I know this whole financial planning thing is not very bohemian of me.  I like to think that I'm a free spirit, and that financial security is not a big part of who I am.  But as I get older, I start thinking about how I don't want to have to work when I'm 70.  I think about the places I want to travel to in a few years.  And I know the way we were headed, our future wasn't looking all that stable. 

And the thing is - seriously, I haven't given up much.  Buying things on a whim, yes, I've cut back on that a lot. Eating out? I needed to cut back on that anyways for the waistline as much as for the budget, so that wasn't that big of a deal either.  It's funny, we had picked up things for so many different projects around the house, that we're STILL working our way through the supplies we had before we started the budget process. 

And we're still going on plenty of vacations - we've got Dragoncon next week, Epcot in October, West Virginia in November...  We did give up one Science Fiction convention, but with all the traveling we're doing this fall it was almost a relief.

Anyways, I'm rambling.  I was paying bills this evening and sometimes that just gets me so tickled that I want to shout to the world how great it is.  Budget is no longer a dirty word.  I may even be ready to shred the cards!