5/26/2004 - 9/18/2013 R.I.P. ... and Good Riddance!

I have a confession to make ... I am a killer.  I have killed without remorse, without regret, and -- to tell you the God's honest truth -- I kinda enjoyed it.

To make matters worse, my victim was barely nine years old, not even through a third of its expected life cycle.

And to top it all off, I celebrated this death.  My wife celebrated it with me.  We went out and had a nice dinner ... on gift cards, of course. 

To be fair ... this thing I killed was trying to kill me, too, so I only consider its death a matter of self defense. 

My friends, our mortgage ... is dead.  And I, for one, am pretty darned happy about it.

3,402 days.  That's how long we lived with that mortgage.  Nine years, three months, 23 days.  That's a long time to live with something that's trying to kill you an inch at a time.  And yet, I consider my wife and I fortunate that we slew this beast as quickly as we did -- we know full well there are countless millions of others out there who will have this beast on their backs for 30 years or more throughout their lives.

How did we kill this fell beast?

• We threw every spare cent towards the principal balance.  By my calculations, we've brought in $37,000 more this year than we've spent.  Guess where nearly every bit of that went?  To help make that amount as large as possible ...
• We continued to live frugally.  We don't live a life of deprivation, and even have managed to raise a happy and healthy toddler ... but we kept our costs low as best we were able.
• We depleted our rainy day account.  This one is not recommended by most financial types, but it was a calculated risk -- and desperate times call for desperate measures.  In the event we do need some sudden influx of emergency money, we have various sources we can tap ... not ideal, but possible.

And so, Wednesday morning I called up, got our payoff amount ... and made the payment.  When my wife and I woke up Thursday morning, it was the first time we had ever done so debt free in the entirety of our marriage.  Let me tell you, it was a truly great feeling.

So where does that leave us now?  We still have many financial goals for the future, and we get to start working toward them immediately.  Some of them are

• Replenish the accounts we raided to pay off the mortgage. We all but depleted our Rainy Day fund, and knocked both of our checking accounts pretty low, as well.  
• Resume contributions to our IRAs.  We've laid off contributions to our IRAs for the past several years to help make our debt-free dreams come true. 
• Set up savings accounts for various other goals.  Repairing and replacing appliances and vehicles, taking vacations, and funding future opportunities for our son.  Just a few of the things we'll be saving up for.

Here's hoping you all are having great success on your own financial journeys!