Recently I received an e-mail from one of the readers that really put a point on the whole reason this blog is here. After receiving permission to reprint her e-mail, it’s included below.

So I just wanted to share with someone I know can truly appreciate it: As of last week, my husband and I have no credit card debt. ZERO!

We’ve been steadily paying down the mistakes made in college (yeah, paying for that late night run to McDonald’s 5 years later because you bought those McNuggets with plastic totally sucks) for a few years now. We have had 3 credit cards literally frozen in ice (if we need them we can get to them, but it has to be worth the effort of digging through the deep freeze and then thawing the sucker out). We paid minimum payments of everything except the highest interest rate account which we paid as much as we possibly could afford to. Once that big one was paid off we started putting as much as we could towards the second highest interest rate card until all we had to focus on was the last credit card. And now it’s done. Paid in full. Balance = 0.

This doesn’t mean we’re debt free. I think I will owe the government for my education until I’m at least 40, but they can’t repo my brain, so I’m ok with that. But we ARE icky-debt free. And that’s a great feeling.

It CAN be done

Thanks for your blog. It’s been fun to read what people think and how they’re managing money, etc. It’s all lessons learned.

Greta

Way to go Greta!

See, you CAN get rid of that credit card debt and get back control of your life. That’s a huge step towards becoming completely debt-free and throwing off the shackles of credit slavery.

Start With the End in Mind

Greta and her family obviously worked hard to get to where they are, and they should be proud of what they’ve accomplished. It’s not easy to pay down/off credit debt, especially when all the credit card companies make it so enticing to get and use. Making a plan and involving the whole family is vital to debt elimination success.

Greta also used one of the tried and true snowball payment plans to maximize her payoff, getting rid of the highest interest rate debt first, and moving downwards from there.

Also, from a follow-up letter;

We did pay down some of the credit card debt using student loans… but again the credit card is frozen in ice so we didn’t pay it down just to run it back up again… and I have to tell you student loans are guaranteed never to exceed 8.25% interest. The credit card was at 29.99%. And I think we have something like 15 years to pay off the student loans. The last credit card was paid off with the Stimulus Check… then we went out for dinner and bought a bottle of champagne with cash (see? the stimulus check did encourage discretionary spending). That was the best part: realizing that we CAN survive without the credit cards. We have them if we need them (plane tickets, hotel reservations), but we don’t HAVE to use them… not for groceries, or even gas. I sleep much better at night.

Our FICO’s have gone up a good bit. The next step is to start making larger payments on our car loans and building our "Buy A House Down-Payment Fund." We’re graduating in August (we went back to grad school at the same time, hence, the student loans) and we’ll probably consolidate the loans since the Fed is so low.

So that’s our success story in a nutshell. Let me know if you want any other information.

Again, I’ve enjoyed reading your blog. It’s been almost like a support group

Greta

It sounds like Greta’s got a solid financial plan in place. It should be no time before she and her family are completely debt-free at the rate she’s going.

Super Job Greta!!

Do you have a success story you’d like to share with the readers?? Leave us a comment, or send us an e-mail and well be sure to get it published.