Hooray!!!

About 5 minutes ago something very exciting happened. I paid off my credit card! This is very happy news for me.

Overall, I consider myself to be very financially responsible. However, there was a time around the end of my sophomore year of college when I didn't work for a while. It was really only about a month, but my parents did not pay for my college nor the cost of living that goes with that...so a month of no income meant using my credit card for pretty much everything. That was also the year I spent $2,000 on a computer for myself, which also went on my credit card because I couldn't pay for it at the time. So needless to say, I became someone who carried around a credit card debt. Despite making regular payments, that debt increased throughout the rest of my college career. It wasn't that I was spending money all the time on things I didn't need. I wouldn't let myself use it for clothes or "party money". It was more that I would need gas or groceries and not have the money at the time to pay for them. So...I would just put them on my credit card.

When I moved out here to Overland Park in June of 2006, I decided I was no longer allowed to use this card. I would make regular payments on it and get it paid off. Sadly, I had such a high balance that it took until now for this to happen. Exactly a year ago, my debt had dwindled down to $3,333.99...still a very sizeable amount of money. I was becoming really frustrated with all the APR money I was paying on this stupid card. I knew I would be getting a tax return in the spring and that I would be getting a raise since I had gotten my Masters degree. So I decided by the end of 2010 I WOULD have this card paid off. Today at around 3:00 PM that $3,333.99 balance became $0.00. And as far as I'm concerned...it will stay that way. I'm perfectly content putting that $300/month into my savings instead.