I’ve been keeping an eye on No Credit Needed’s “33 Days” challenge and looking for something he posted that just absolutely inspires me.  Well, he issued a challenge yesterday that is truly near and dear to my heart: Stop using credit cards!  This isn’t a challenge for me, because I stopped using those before New Year’s Day.  I issued the same challenge to hubby, and the last time he used that pesky Star Card was back in May.  And do you know what?  They are ALL paid off now!

Earlier this morning I blogged about how paying bills can be fun when you have the budget, and mentioned in passing how unexpected things that pop up and threaten to wreck your budget aren’t so scary when you don’t have as many payments to make each month.  I just can’t leave that hanging.

• I paid off the Chase MasterCard back in February, cutting out a $25 minimum payment every month. 
• I paid off the American Express card for the last time (double motnh interest billing or some such shenanigans) and freed up a minimum of $35 a month, even though we paid more than the min every month.
• I paid off the pesky AAFES Star card (a military credit card) in one fell swoop at the beginning of July, simply because I could now that so much money had been freed up in every month.  Seriously, I killed the entire balance with just one payment! Hubby had been paying $75 per month at the beginning of the year then doubled it after he realized I was serious about getting rid of the credit card debt.

These were just our credit cards.  During that time I also made the final payment on my car note and paid of a small loan at my credit union, making the sudden and lethal strike on the Star card possible.

I will add my voice to NCN’s here: stop using your credit cards, pay them all off, then sit back and marvel at just how much money you have left over in your budget!  When I did my first budget in January 2007, I was amazed to find we had $600 every month that didn’t need to go right out the door in payments.  Paying off the above listed debts has freed up at least another $600 every single month!  When we finally sell the truck, that will be yet another $700 per month (what we are paying on it now) that is freed up for us to save!  Becoming debt free will give us about $2000 each and every month that we can put into savings for my graduate school tuition, which means it will be possible for me to get my pharmacy degree WITHOUT a student loan… and that is very exciting considering the tuition will run about $27,100 per year.  The truly amazing part of all this is hubby is an E-4 (lower enlisted, specialist) in the Army, I get VA Disability, the GI Bill, and drive pizzas on the weekends.  We don’t even make the “average” income for a family of three.