I'm so happy to read that you finally have a positive net worth!
It's been a long time coming. You deserve it!

What peachy said. Congrats!

Out of the red and into the black! That's a HUGE milestone, congrats! Keep up the great work!

congratulations! now for the fun of watching that nice positive number get bigger.. and bigger... and bigger...

thanks, all! that negative sign has been hounding us for all those years we were in school. no more!

Adding my congratulations!

thanks Panda!

so, spouse's big celebration/indulgence for having this fantastic job after the difficulty of school and subsequent unemployment was to go watch the space shuttle launch. for those of you not following along, it was scheduled for last tuesday. then wednesday. then thursday, then today, then this coming monday, and now 11/30.

we live ~1000 miles from cape canaveral. and he just drove down there and spent 4 nights in a hotel for nothing. and blew some of his vacation time already.

i am less than pleased about this, but it's one of the very few lifelong dreams he has that have only a couple of chances to be fulfilled. so we made the decision to indulge him for this.

of course, now we are feeling a little silly about that delay, but it was an uncontrollable situation. and of course, he insists he will go back... sigh.

it set us back a few weeks from the plan, and here i was really hoping we could really buckle down and knock out the remaining student loans by the end of january and really i suppose i should just shut up, given that this would have set us back 8-10 MONTHS in our former situation.

he's getting that tendency now to say "it's okay, we make enough money" - but i am not satisfied with using our hard earned dollars (and i mean that in the "it took us 10 freaking years, a fair amount of sallie mae debt, and unquantifiable hard work and sacrifice to get here" sense) to just fritter them away without purpose. he does not yet grasp the time value of money. we're getting there... it's good that i generally run the finances.

when he gets home tomorrow, he goes back to the cash-only spending money, we put away his credit card, pay the sucker off, and quit fooling around with the finances already. i am mad at sallie mae and i want her out of my life for good.

just sent along another big payment to sallie, zeroed out the non-student-loan debt again, agreeable spending plan in place for spouse.

for next month's holiday, some friends are coming to visit and we are going to the ocean. we plan to spend the same amount on our little vacation as we would to road-trip it home, but we get to relax instead of rush around everywhere and wind up exhausted. i think we'll set aside about $400 for that.

i'll post another net worth number after my monthly paycheck gets here and all is said and done for the month.

alright, i've balanced everything out for the month. ready for the new net worth?

now it is....
$4356.23!!!
not including spouse's newly established 401k and roth accounts at his job, or the current balance in the checking account.

i don't believe it! mathematically equivalent or not, this is much more rewarding than seeing a negative number get less negative. also, having two career-track incomes (finally... finally... i can not say that enough) is a huge accelerator here.

despite the recent setback, we've made *huge* progress toward the student loans, which accounts for 99% of the net worth increase. i have another $580 scheduled to go in later this week- after interest, $500 could safely be added to that number above.

bonus- factoring in the pending payments, we've paid off half our combined graduation-day student loan principal. we paid zero interest on his loans, and we're set to pay nowhere near the $6000 estimated interest amortized over 10 years on mine.

also, with extra withholding on spouse's income, i suspect (hope) i am over-saving for my quarterly estimated taxes. any extra would go toward the loans, of course.

i've decided i'm going to give mint a try beginning with the new year. i tried the program my former bank offered and did not like it. i've been pretty good about keeping a lid on the non-essential spending, but i would like to keep better track.

i was kind of afraid i'd start buying frivolous stuff now that we're not just squeaking by. so i looked back at the month, and saw i bought the following non-food/shelter essentials:
-new contacts (not optional)
-new work boots for spouse (not optional, but $15 over reimbursement allowance)
-professional society membership and abstract fee (not optional, but abstract fee will be reimbursed)
-small personal care item (optional but i liked the idea)
-2 new shirts and warm pajamas (optional)
-discount curtain rod, curtain, shower head (yeah, optional, but creature comforts)
-flag display case for gift sent from military friend (i considered this not optional.)

and that's pretty much it. this is not much at all. i am ok with it. now let's see if we can stay on track this coming month and throw all we've got at these loans.

here we are, in the middle of the last month of the year.

i just looked things over briefly tonight- we are solidly on track to knock the student loans below $10k by the new year. i like to see this. i bet we could be doing a little more, but we also are finally starting to enjoy life a little after 10 very hard years. this is important to us. we're already paying the hell out of the loans.

still doing a bit of spending, but it's still mostly stuff we've put off forever. also there are always a few extra dollars spent over the holiday season- if our friends are driving 14 hours to see us, we can at least have an air bed for them to sleep in when they get here.

a 2010 wrap-up...

student loan balance goal: bested by about $800! what a great feeling to see just a 4-digit number in the balance column.
net worth: positive, and better than i anticipated! (though about $500 short of a landmark.)

overall this was a big turnaround year for us. a tremendous relief after many years of being stretched almost to the limit. the frugality and diligence learned during those years continue to be very useful, but in a different way. next year we knock down the student loans, continue with the retirement funding progress, and build up our savings.