As many of you know by now, I paid off the last of my credit card debt today!

I am so excited.  Mostly about what it means for how I can live my life now.  I feel like I can finally take a deep breath.  I’ve put so much pressure on myself to pay off this debt and before that it was the debt itself that was crushing me.  Now I’m free.

I feel like I could have written this post better six months ago than I can now.  I would have been full of wisdom and inspiration. My current attitude is something else.  Maybe distraction.  More likely disbelief.   A little uncertainty about what to do now.

It frustrates me to feel unsettled, but I think this is a really good place for me to be.  I thought I would pay off my debt and be on to the next thing immediately, but this hesitation I feel has me approaching this new reality cautiously.

I started accumulating debt when I was thrown into a new situation.  One I could not handle no matter how much I had prepared for it and budgeted.  But, I stuck with my plan, because I didn’t know what else to do and it took me too long to realize it wasn’t working.  Self-delusion clouded my vision.

I have plans for what to do now, of course.  I’ve been writing and rewriting them this entire time.  But, I want to pay attention this time to what works and what doesn’t.  I want to think and rethink what’s worth it to me and what isn’t.

For now, though, high fives and air kicks and fist bumps.  I did it.

So, this is the last of these posts.  How crazy is that?  The next time I update you on my progress, I will be out of debt.

I’ve thought several times to write a post about how excited slash impatient I am to be out of debt, but not only is that incredibly obvious, but I find a way to mention it in every single post here and on my personal blog.  That’s how excited I am!

But, very impatient too.  Thank goodness this is such a busy time of year.  Plenty of distractions.

I’m below the $1000 mark.  96% of the way there!

I’m still on track!  On track to be out of debt by the end of the year, that is.  Good thing, because I am so ready and I really can’t think of a better way to start 2011.  Strange to think there’s only one more of these mid-month update posts to go.

Progress!

Not as much as I wanted after purchasing my ticket to San Francisco and dealing with some minor car trouble.  But, October is one of those glorious months with three pay days (at the part time job), so I’m finally below $5,000 total, which means I’m more than 3/4 of the way done.  I should still be out of debt by the end of the year.  I am so ready.  It’s getting hard to put everything off until I’m out of debt.

If you’re paying close attention, you’ll notice a big change from last month.  It was a couple things.  I was pretty conservative in August, because I knew there might be some unexpected expenses with the start of school.  Once all of that passed, I was able to throw that money toward my debt.

Then my school loans came through and I somehow overestimated the cost of tuition, which left me with a refund.  I was very intentional in not doing that before, because I didn’t see the point in paying off my credit card by taking on more school loan debt (even though it’s at a lower rate); it also wasn’t an option for me when I started, because I could never get enough in school loans to cover my credit card debt (don’t think I didn’t hope for a long time that that would be my way out).  After buying books for school and covering some other expenses that came up in August, I was left with about $1,000 extra, which I put toward my credit card debt.

October will also be big, because it’s one of those glorious months with three pay days (at the part-time job).  Ah, that number is getting small!

I haven’t made as much progress as I wanted to, but August has been and continues to be an expensive month.  I went home, I had car expenses, I need to purchase another plane ticket to Washington, school is starting, and I had a time sheet issue that meant money I normally would have had by now won’t be coming in until Friday.

And, I finally splurged on the one big ticket item I knew from the beginning I would not be waiting to get out of debt before purchasing: iPhone 4.  I was holding off as long as I could, but I came home from vacation to a very big pay day, so I paid all of my bills and then I went to the Apple site and ordered it.  Can’t wait to have it in my hands.

Even though I’m always kind of frustrated with my progress, now that I’m below the $10,000 mark, every lower number just feels so exciting.  My debt gets more manageable all the time.

(Also, as you can see in the picture above, they updated the mint.com iPhone app. to make it uglier. I miss that pretty back ground.)

It’s pretty awesome to be down to one card even if I don’t feel like I’ve made much progress since.  It’s always been quite depressing to think that even when I make it to the last card, I’ll still have $10,000 to go, but now I’m taking it down.  It feels pretty awesome actually.  I know I always say I don’t feel like I’m making any progress, becuase that is how I feel most of the time, but when I put up these posts and then look back even just to the previous month, I do see that I’m making progress.

This last month has been quite expensive in terms of fun things to spend money on, like a $13 ticket to Eclipse and $180 at VidCon ($80 ticket I purchased in January; $100 spent on food and parking), and now I’m planning a trip home, which will cost me some money in lost wages at my part-time job. But, it’s all worth it.  I think I could easily be spending more money on all of these things by slipping into that mode where I think, “well, I’m already spending money here, so why not just buy whatever I want?”

This has been just like every other goal I’ve pursued where I set the standard at perfection and I am disappointed that I can’t achieve it, but just doing pretty well most of the time makes for progress.

If the picture looks a little different to you, it’s because I canceled the Bank of America Visa and removed it from the list.

Oh, so close!  It was my goal to have the WF Visa paid off by this point in the month, but it’s not going to happen until my next pay day.  It was already going to be a stretch, but then I threw myself off by forgetting to turn in my last timesheet at the part time job.  I’m working most of my hours out of the office this Summer, so I keep forgetting to get my time sheets in and signed.  The good news is that I’ve earned the money–I just don’t have it in hand! Look out for my ZOMG! THE WF VISA IS PAID OFF AND I AM NOW HALFWAY DONE PAYING IT ALL OFF in a couple weeks.

I keep opening the Mint.com app on my iPhone just to stare at that $600 balance.  It’s making me very happy.

I found out this week that I will be getting small raises at both of my jobs.  We’re talking minimal.  Like, probably only an extra $20 or so a month between the two, but I’m pretty excited, because I wasn’t expecting anything at all, considering I work for two non-profits and we’re in a recession. I don’t know the official numbers yet, but I should receive the raise at my full-time job starting at the beginning of our fiscal year (July) and the other at the start of the school year (September).

I was feeling like I hadn’t made any progress, because May has been a slow month with smaller pay checks and I did do some spending, but apparently I have a short memory, because I’m still down almost $1500 from last month.

I am striving to have the WF Visa paid off by this time next month.  I think I can do it, but it will be a push.

I can’t say how awesome it feels to see the WF Visa (or the WTF! Visa, as Paige put it) in the 3,000 range.  Somehow that just seems so much smaller than 4,000.  I’m now more than half way done paying it off (the original balance was $7,500).  It’s going to be mid-June before I’m completely done with it, but I’m getting there!

Apparently, they had a possible information leak at Bank of America, so that card up there with the zero balance–the one I paid off!–was recently replaced with a shiny new one.  You know how I like shiny things, but the new one is sitting in my desk drawer along with the old one.   I’m just excited that I get the satisfaction of cutting up two cards.  I plan to close that account in a few months, probably after I pay off the WF Visa.

Just seeing the change since last month is crazy.