I haven’t done an update on our credit-card debt free journey in quite a while. It’s been nearly 3 years since we first started our journey to becoming credit-card debt free and we paid off our first credit card debt in November 2014. We are now almost completely debt-free on the second credit card debt which was much, much higher and as a result, much, much more difficult to pay off. Yet, here we are now, two more months, or two more payments, away from credit-card debt freedom so we are nearly there! This is the final stretch!
The reason I’ve been a bit quiet about this on my blog is because I think we’d probably hit the debt-payment plateau over the last few months, financially as well as emotionally. We’d reached our maximum stretch. We’d cut down as much as we could and wherever we could (read more about How we reduced our monthly expenditure and 10 ways we save money everyday). There was nothing more to cut down on so that we could find extra room in our budget for additional payments. We made the same, steady, monotonous extra payments each and every month.
We were working as much as we could and there were literally no more extra hours left in the day, Monday to Friday, or the weekends, for us to earn extra money. While we haven’t lost heart, and we are still as focussed as we can be, we’d just flat-lined a bit. Now that we are two more months, or two more payments, away from credit-card debt freedom, it feels a bit surreal. I almost didn’t even want to write a blog post about it in case… well, in case, something went wrong.
Can we relax a bit now? I think so. There are going to be no more crazy working hours and working over the weekends, at least not for a while and certainly not for me. Working non-stop is not fun, especially when it carries on for a bit longer than what your body can take. I’ve been walking around exhausted for months now, and this has affected my health and general well-being. This month, for example, I got my second bout of flu in less than 3 weeks and the second time round I was literally ordered to stay in bed for several days (which I did) so that I can recover completely and get some of my energy back.
But despite hitting the debt payoff plateau, so to speak, we still made the same additional payments every month for the last few months and it’s now down to just two more of those payments, and at this point, it doesn’t even matter that we cannot increase those extra payments. What matters, and what sounds awfully good as I say it to myself, is that those two extra payments will get paid. Saying that to myself, I actually feel lighter. Happier. Less burdened. Freer. Not yet completely free but freer. I even sleep better, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that.
So what’s next for us? The first step I’m looking forward to is seeing a ZERO balance on the second credit card very, very soon. The second step I’m looking forward to even more is closing that account for good. And after that? All I can is – stay tuned, frugal friends…!
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