Here are my financial goals now that I am out of credit card debt.

1. Save. I got out of debt with really nothing of an emergency fund. (I wouldn’t recommend this, but this is how I did it.)  $10,000 is the goal I have in mind.  That’s about 6 months worth of expenses.  I’d like to accomplish this by the end of 2011.  That’s a pretty doable goal and will also allow me to save for other things like travel.

2. Work less. It is tempting to keep working 15 hour days, because I can do it and it would mean reaching all of my financial goals very quickly, but I don’t want to.  I want more time to be a student and more time to be a human being.  This means quitting one of my jobs.

3. Retirement. This is kind of embarrassing, but I’ve been saving for my retirement for a couple years now and I have no idea what I am doing.  However my employer originally signed me up is exactly how it has remained and whenever I receive a statement, I look at it like it’s written in another language and then I put it away.  There are counselors we can meet with, but I’ve put off doing so until I paid off my debt.  I don’t have a retirement savings goal in mind yet, but I do want to figure out what I’m doing.

4. Student Loans. Ah, yeah, those.  I’m not really out of debt at all.  I have a ton more still to pay off.  I’m several years from graduation, so my loans are not yet in repayment.  I want to have a solid emergency fund in place and then I’ll dig in on the student loans.  I will be paying on them for quite a while, but not forever like I once thought.

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When I first started paying off my debt, I was looking at a balance of more than $20,000 and thinking, why didn’t I do this earlier?

I thought that for two reasons.  First, it turned out that doing something about my debt was so much easier than just stressing about it.  I cannot say how miserable it was to feel crushed by the weight of not just all the money I owed, but the guilt over having put myself in that position.  Second, if I had started earlier, then I would be further along, of course!

I took the only option available to me and started at the beginning.

I never despaired, but it was not easy. I sometimes experienced the never-tweeted-about, never-blogged-about “ZOMG. I work more than anyone. I never get a break. My life is so hard. No one understands” thoughts, but I always had enough perspective to remember I was doing this for myself.  I was giving up my free time to make my own life better.  Selfish, really, but the good kind of selfish, because how much can you help anyone out when you’re limited by debt?

What I’m saying is that it’s worth it.  Worth it to do whatever you have to do to get your own life in order.  And worth it to sacrifice a little so that you can live better later.  Not when you retire, but sooner than you might expect.

But, as cool as it is to be out of credit card debt, the year I spent working toward it was pretty amazing too.  I gave up stuff, and stuff is great, but it’s probably the easiest thing to give up. This year, I was just as happy and had just as much fun as years previous.  I kept working toward my academic and career goals.  I wrote a lot.  I met amazing people.  I made plans, imaginary and real.  I remained sane.  And all with the extra bonus of feeling good about what I was accomplishing in paying off my debt.

If I gave up too much, then I would regret it now, but instead I thank everything that I was smart enough to just get started already.

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