still on track

In about three weeks, I'm going to be doing something momentous: I'll be paying off my car. My budget, a bit like the Enterprise under attack by Khan (1982 movie, not 2013), took some massive hits in November, but as I'd written before, it's still unsinkable. I'll be a mite poor in December, but I'm not worried because, come January, I'll be building right back up again.

With the car debt out of the way, that'll be one major debt of four. The second major debt, my OneMain Financial loan, will get paid off in April of next year, im'sh'al-Lah. Once those two debts are out of the way, that's $500/month of breathing room for me. The third debt will have to wait until 2017 before I can slay it, and the final debt, my enormous Sallie Mae loan, will come tumbling down in 2018, one calendar year before the year in which I turn fifty (I turn fifty in 2019, in case you're not following along).

I've advertised this as being "debt-free before fifty," but technically, I'll still have a small amount of credit-card debt, and I'll still be paying for food, living expenses, etc., so I won't be totally debt-free. Monthly bills don't go away. But that won't matter: I'll be free of the debt that counts, and that's all I'm worried about. How nice it will be not to have to live any longer under the shadow of the valley of debt.


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