Well, it's finally happened. I am officially debt-free. Sure, I paid off a big chunk of debt two and half years ago, but I was still left with my Student Loans and a new car payment. If you remember, though, I had a plan for that about two years ago. 

Plans though, if anything, can often change and mine were no exception. My second part-time job was just too much so after a few months, I hung up my apron and got back to tending to other things in my life that really needed tending to. Still, I paid a chunk of money on my Student loans so was in the process of figuring out my best plan of attack when the email came. Because I had fulfilled my twenty years in the IDR plan (income-driven repayment plan), I was eligible to have the remaining balance of my student loans forgiven. I was ecstatic but hesitant...I mean, was it really going to happen? I calculated previously that I had already paid back quite a bit more than I owed, so I was thrilled at the idea. I waited impatiently (not my strong suit, I admit) for the required month before the Dept of Ed sent my information to my student loan servicer. After the month was up, I was like a woman possessed - checking my email and the website for both my loan servicer and FSA like 100 times a day. Finally, I logged into my loan servicer's website one morning and my student loan debt....was gone!!! I cannot even begin to describe how that felt. 

This left only one debt in my path: my car loan. I had already paid off a significant portion of that, so I figured I should just get it off my back as well. I decided to take some of my big emergency fund, combined with my regular savings, and just pay it off. And that's exactly what I did.

This means your girl is debt-free. I mean, really and truly debt-free. I'm taking my car payment amount each month and funneling half back into my emergency fund and the other half into a new high-yield savings account that I plan to use for building up a down payment. On what, you might ask? Well, some land and a little house to put on it, that's what.

If you ask me, it's about damn time.