Debt Free!

We paid off our last debt at the beginning of July, so we are now officially debt free!  It's a great feeling, but we still feel like we have a long way to go.  The next step is to save 3-6 months worth of expenses in an emergency fund which is going to take quite a bit longer (almost 2 years!) than paying off our debts (which took about 4 months).  So before we go all out on saving up for that emergency fund, we're going to use some of our tremendous "debt snowball" next month to go on a mini-shopping spree.  This is mainly just a way of rewarding ourselves for being disciplined for the last 4 months and to recharge our batteries for the next step.

One thing I might have done differently with step 2 is not stop our retirement fund contributions at work.  In order to pay off the debt faster, we put a hold on our retirement fund contributions.  Since I receive a matching contribution from work, we essentially passed on free money for retirement.  Oh well, lessons learned!  On to step 3!