We did it…after 7 long years of nagging credit card debt hanging over our heads we finally kicked it to the curb. I say we, despite, for many years I was financially separate from my husband and in denial about my beloved’s tango with the cc. I realized that when you marry into debt, you must stop looking the other way and do your darnedest to contribute and erraticate the problem. I took over the finances two years ago and after painstaking, vacation-forgoing, Quicken-using, detail managed to click the button on finality while paying bills online today. Fin. See you COMMERCE! Quit sending me those stupid checks, DISCOVER! Stop calling my house, WELLS FARGO! (That’s the problem, once they find out you’ve paid off they start sniffing around).

I was always really poor at math (I still am), but I fell deeply in love with Quicken. Its simple categorical way of tracking, its graphs, its charts (so that’s how much I spend on coffee every month!) Sure, it takes time, and I don’t ever really look at the budget, but once it showed me six months ago that we had only a $100 to last us a week (hey, that was surprisingly hard!) Quicken informs me exactly how much gas I spend in one month, how much our trip to Port Townsend cost, and if we have enough money to, oh, you know, buy a new sweater. Despite the debt, we have fantastic credit and despite my misgivings, we purchased a house (talk about debt). We also have a hefty student loan payment still hovering on a cloud above us too, but Josh’s degree has certainly been paying for itself. When that sucker gets paid off (in 15 years) we’ll be pulling out all the stops and dancing on rooftops…just you wait.