We have moved into our new apartment in Colorado! It took a while for the furniture to arrive, and we are so glad to get off the airbed and get into a real bed. We’re old pros at moving so it only took a week or so to get unpacked and completely settled in.

We thought this would be a good time to take stock, see how far we’ve come and plan our next steps. When we first started this conversation we were carrying the following debts:

$ 280k  mortgage
$   65k  student loan
$   40k  vehicle loans
$  385k  total

When we sold the house, we got rid of the mortgage and were lucky enough to clear a little extra cash. We had been hanging onto the money just in case we needed it for something unforeseen during the move, or perhaps as a down payment on a new house in CO. After talking about it for a while, though, we decided to use that money to pay off the student loan instead. We aren’t ready to buy a house yet — we only just got here and would like to take some time to decide where we want to live long term. In addition, real estate is very expensive in the Front Range area of Colorado and we’d have to save for a while to get a reasonable down payment. But the amount we had was just enough to pay off the student loan and have a little emergency fund left, so we paid that fucker off. After making payments on it for more than twenty years and making barely any progress, it feels amazing to have that student loan GONE.

That just left the two car payments and all the associated expenses like the gas, insurance and running costs. Overall it was costing us about $1k/month for the two vehicles. However, now that we both work 100% remote, we only drive somewhere a couple of times a week, and we realized that we don’t need two cars any more. So we traded in both vehicles, our Toyota 4Runner and Subaru Outback, for a little gas-sipping Subaru Crosstrek. Since the Crosstrek was new, we did have to take out a small loan, but it was a small amount and we should have it paid off in six months or less. We are very close to being debt-free!

This leaves us in a great place financially. We are also eating better and enjoying the Colorado springtime. We’re on track to get to a much better place, and we’re making it happen.