My journey out of debt has ended, and so now it is time to end this blog as well.  I have never ended a blog before, so I’m not sure what to do, especially considering I’m not really going anywhere.  I guess that gives me a place to start.  If you’re interested, here are some of the many other places you can find me:

Writing to Reach You – my personal blog
Twitter – I tweet a lot
Email – I’m pretty good at responding
Tumblr – I post pretty things
Dailybooth – I’m a narcissist

If you’re just coming across this blog for the first time, then here are some of the posts I’d recommend reading:

• I Want To Be Debt Free – My first post here.
• From Dave Ramsey – Listening to Dave Ramsey was what gave me the final kick to start paying off my debt.
• Acting Rich – On making money an issue.
• It Was the Shopping Too – Confession, it’s good for the soul.
• On Not Buying Stuff – What it’s like to not spend money.
• A Clarification – My motivation for getting out of debt.
• It’s Shockingly Possible – Supporting yourself is not impossible.
• Strategies I Use – How I got out of debt.
• It Wasn’t Any Fun – Getting out of debt is more fun than spending what you don’t have.
• What This Experience Has Taught Me About Money – What I’ve learned about my while getting out of debt.
• Having Fought For It – It matters that I worked hard for this.
• When I’m Not Here – The everyday of getting out of debt.
• Balance: $0 – I did it!

Thank you again for all of your support!  This blog will remain, but if I choose to write more about personal finance, I will probably do so on my personal blog.  Don’t be a stranger!

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.

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.

I have a confession.  When I was in debt, there was something kind of thrilling about buying stuff.  It was knowing I shouldn’t, but doing it anyway.  I’m not a wild person, so I guess this was the lame way I rebelled.

Part of it was this thought I often had where, like an addict, this was going to be the last thing I’d buy and then I would be set to not buy anything else for a long time.  It was the pizza you eat the night before you start a diet.  The last hurrah that leads into the excitement of taking control of your life.  Except, then there was something else to buy and look at those shiny things over there.  (The time I finally was serious about paying off my debt, there was no final shopping trip.  I got started with no hurrah at all–just the thrill of getting out of debt.)

Another confession: the first thing I did after making the final transfer to clear my credit card balance was tweet and blog about it.  The second thing I did was go shopping.  I mean, it was December 23rd and I had purchased zero Christmas presents, so I had to.  Of course I shopped for myself as well.

Don’t get me wrong, it was nice finally buying new jeans.  I really needed new shoes too.  But, I walked through the stores and I picked things up and even though they kind of sparked my interest, I put them back down again, because they didn’t seem worth the money or worth the space they’d take up in my apartment.  I knew that if I really wanted them, then I’d buy them later.  I didn’t delude myself into thinking that nice scarf would really make much of a difference in my life.

Without the thrill of buying what I shouldn’t or the urgency of getting that shiny thing now or never, I found myself making incredibly reasonable decisions. Stuff lost some of its appeal.  Obviously, this is a great place to be, but now I have to look somewhere else for thrills.  I’m considering starting a fight club.

It is so nice not to worry about money all the time.

I thought I’d feel a greater sense of relief after paying off my debt.  Maybe I would run up some stairs, listening to “Gonna Fly Now.”  Or pull out a big red marker and cross Get Out of Debt off of every list I’ve ever made.  At the very least, I would break my arm patting myself on the back for accomplishing the biggest goal I have ever attempted.

Instead, I feel this very quiet pride in being able to easily pay for the things I want. I don’t cringe every time I pull out my debit card to buy the things I need and the things I don’t (you should have seen how sparkly that nail polish was).  I can treat other people.  I can buy the foods I really like.  I don’t stress about things breaking down.  I’m not running on luck, crossing my fingers that something doesn’t go wrong.

This is the feeling I was working so hard for, but I wasn’t sure it would really come along.  I thought I might replace stress about debt with stress about savings. I thought I might go crazy filling my life with all the things I’ve sacrificed the last 14 months.  But, I’m not even really tempted.  I have money today and I will have money tomorrow, so the sense of urgency I felt building up my debt and paying it off is not there.

I guess this is the transition period, but I feel settled already.  And it’s really nice.

Thanks for all of your congratulations everyone.  The same people who wished me well on day one were congratulating me last week and have been cheering me on this whole time.

I was never dependent on this blog for motivation or accountability, but it has given me this tremendous opportunity to work through the kind of thinking that got me into debt and the kind that got me out.

More than that, your support has made me feel less alone in all of this.  Dave Ramsey always says if you’ll live like no one else, then later you can live like no one else. I have been living like no one else for more than a year now and sometimes it felt discouraging and isolating.  Sometimes it was just difficult and it was nice to know there were people out there who knew how hard I was working.

Thanks for congratulating me at every milestone.  Thanks for being as excited for me as I am.  Thanks for letting me know every time you pay off a loan or a card; it gives me a chance to return the congratulations. And thanks for reading! (Special thanks to one of my first ever and most favorite blog friends, Sophia, who wins the award for never letting a single opportunity pass to say “Yay!” at my progress.)

I still plan to end this blog, but not immediately, and the archives will remain.

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.

Part of preparing for the reality of being out of debt has been going through everything I have and getting rid of what I don’t need or want.  I should say that I’ll take just about any opportunity to do this.  I love getting rid of things.  I always have at least one bag in my trunk full of stuff to take to the Goodwill.  I’m not just a person who likes to be organized; I actually love the act of organizing things.  What I’m saying is that this has been fun for me.  But, it’s also been educational.

It’s been a weird year, because I’ve continued to regularly go through my things and pull out stuff to give away, but unlike all the years before, I haven’t been replacing these items with new things.  So, by now there are a bunch of empty hangers in my closet.  What’s more surprising to me is that there aren’t more empty hangers. And shelves and drawers.  A year of purchasing almost nothing new and yet I still have so much stuff.

On my early lists of stuff I would buy once I was out of debt, I had a bunch of expensive makeup listed.  After spending a couple days going through my current makeup collection, I’ve realized that’s the last thing I need or want. I made some deep cuts and yet I still have more than I can even find room for. And way, way more than I ever use.  Why a person who rarely wears anything but brown eyeshadow has a rainbow of shades is beyond me or anyone reasonable.  It would appear that my credit card is far more whimsical than I am.

I won’t even talk about the nail polish except to admit that I have 18 shades of green and green isn’t even a favorite color of mine.  Okay, so this one will be harder.  I do love nail polish, but I have rules in place, the first of which is no more green nail polish!

Obviously, I have a thing for pretty colors and I can be a bit of a collector if I let myself.  So, I won’t let myself.

This whole process took me from, “Well, maybe I’ll just pick up a few things I’ve wanted for a while” to “No, no, no more makeup.  You have it all already and you really don’t wear most of it.”  The bottom line is that this just is not the way I want to spend my money and the bright lights of Ulta lead me to making bad decisions.  Best to just avoid as much as I can.  I mean, if I’ve done it for more than a year, then I think I’ll be okay.

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!

In the Summer of 2009, I thought for a moment that it might be a good idea to at least face my debt, so I decided to pull my credit score.  I don’t remember the exact number, but it was bad.  Technically speaking, it was poor.

It had taken quite a while for it to finally catch up to me, but by then it was in the 500 range, and I let myself be too embarrassed about it to actually do anything.

Later in the year when I started this whole thing, my credit score was not a big priority.  I figured I’d just get myself out of debt and hope that my credit score would eventually reflect that hard work.  It remained something of a sore subject for me, because more than the debt itself, it was a sign that I’d messed up and I expected it would follow me even after I’d erased all other signs of my failure.

I’ve come to terms with my debt since then.  It’s easy to do when the number starts seeming reasonable.  So my credit score is no longer something I want to hide myself from.

Then there’s the fact that my score is fine now.  Technically speaking again, it’s good.  It did take some time to show improvement, but as my debt went down and opened up available credit, my score went up.  It’s now in the mid-700s

It did exactly what it was supposed to do without any magic required.  And while I have every intention of getting it to excellent, I’m good for now.