Now I need a "Don't laugh; it's paid for" bumper sticker.
I’ll keep it short because this has nothing to do with knitting and is probably of no interest to anyone except me (frankly, even my husband’s not that interested), but we paid off our car loan—and we did it two years early!
Three years ago we bought our behemoth when I was hugely pregnant with Chubby Chan and friends were outright laughing when we proposed that we might try to fit three car seats into the back seat of our tiny little Saturn sedan. We traded in the Saturn and got a reasonably good deal on a used (sorry, “pre-owned”) Taurus X but we had to take out a 5-year loan to do it.
Then two years ago I decided to go all Dave Ramsey on our finances (got all annoying and self-righteous about it too—just ask my husband). Iced the credit cards (not literally, but we did stop using them), paid off that last little bit of Dear Husband’s student loan that had been hanging over our heads since we got married, and I began putting half what Rope Knits made into extra car payments. We lucked into some extra money just before Christmas—my husband got bumped from a flight and the airline gave him a check to make up for it—and we were DONE.
We still have a mortgage back in Illinois (happily renting the house out now) and will probably take on another mortgage soon when we buy a house here, so I’m trying not to get too complacent. But this is it for the small-time debt.
So to everyone who’s bought a pattern or taken a class from me in the past two years (or ever): thank you so very much! Your support really has made a difference for us and I deeply appreciate it.
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That’s so awesome! Always a good feeling when you accomplish something like that.
I bet you are enjoying your one less thing to pay every month. We where lucky enough to buy our truck out right as hubby received his signing bonus. That was great. After his brother destroyed our satern a was worried about having a car loan. It is great that you took your earnings to pay it off early. Perhaps you should do the same for your mortgage now?
I hope we’ll never have to take out another loan for anything other than a mortgage. Right now we’re putting all our extra into a down payment for the next house, but once that’s done I’d like to start paying down the mortgage on the old house (that we couldn’t sell and are now renting).