A few weeks ago, J.D. and I were chatting when he asked me what it felt like to be debt-free. He'd read on my blog that I had no debt and was curious if I'd write about it for Get Rich Slowly. In particular, he asked me to communicate both how I managed to pay off my mortgage (the biggest debt most people have) as well as how it felt when we did so. I was happy to accept his offer.

Just to note, the purpose of this post isn't to debate whether or not paying off all debt is a good idea (versus only making mortgage payments and investing the rest, for example), so I've purposely left it out. My goal is simply to tell you our story — what happened and how we did it. From there, you can decide whether or not this path is for you. Since my wife and I are debt-haters, this option simply seemed natural to us. In addition, I can also tell you that living ten years without any debt has been a great feeling.

In the mid-90's, we moved to the southern part of the U.S. Here's how we paid off our mortgage in 1997 and haven't had one since: Continue reading...

I asked, as I sometimes do, what personal finance question my friends and Twitter followers had for me. It was a slow day on the internet and the responses flooded in.

My friend Neil asked, "what do you think about real estate?" A broad question, indeed, and I got him to clarify. "You know... should I buy a house? Why not just rent?"

Why not indeed.

Note: Although I try to keep GRS a politics-free zone, today's topic is inherently political. I've stayed as neutral as possible in the article, but I know that there'll be some political discussion in the comments. Please keep conversation civil, as always.

Recently at The Simple Dollar, Trent posed the question, "How much do taxes matter to you?" As might be expected, his readers responded with passionate comments from both sides of the political spectrum. The discussion frustrated me, though. There's just too much misinformation, and people offer their opinions as if they were facts.

I'm as guilty as anyone else.

I recently came across an interesting statistic. According to a poll from Harris Interactive, 41 percent of people rarely or never redeem their credit card rewards. It almost hurts to know all of those rewards are going to waste. A more recent study found that 73 percent of Americans are enrolled in rewards programs but have no idea how many points they have.

That used to be me. I discovered the magic of rewards points sometime right after college, when I finally started to take an interest in my financial situation. I wondered what the large number looming above my account number was, and, next thing I knew, years of unknowingly accumulating rewards points turned into a $100 statement credit.

Since then, I've been taking full advantage. I use my credit card like a debit card, budgeting and paying off everything I spend. My card doesn't carry a fee, and I don't rack up consumer debt -- I just earn points. And as modest an amount as it may be, I always get a little excited when I periodically redeem my rewards.

I just read Barbara Stanny's "Secrets of Six-Figure Women." I was happy to find that I share similar traits to the 150 women she interviewed. But there was a section that stood out to me, mostly because I didn't expect it to stand out to me.

We previously reviewed Stanny's book "Overcoming Underearing." Guest reviewer Jeremy M. wrote:

"[Stanny] learned that the big difference between highly successful women and less successful women was how they valued themselves and what they were willing to do to get what they wanted."

I almost never pay the entirety of my rent. I don't have roommates and I've never been evicted. In the four years I rented a one-bedroom New York City apartment, I paid the full rent only one month. I now own a condo in Portland, Oregon, and I almost never pay my mortgage.

I'm able to keep my condo and apartment because I let strangers pay my bills for me. I've created a situation where my home generates income.

Letting Strangers Pay My Rent

Here's how I did it in New York City for four years: I traveled nearly every week for my job as a management consultant. I was out of town Monday-Thursday most weeks. I reasoned that other people like me may have the opposite commute pattern, where work brings them to New York weekdays. I posted an ad on Craigslist for a “part-time roommate”, and sure enough, lots of people were interested in paying me for the privilege of staying in my cute, East Village apartment three nights a week while I was away.

How much should you spend on a wedding? Well, that depends on who you're asking, I suppose. As I'm sure most of you are aware, the personal finance blogosphere tends to be divided into two main camps: those that are focused on investments and entrepreneurship and those that are focused on frugality.

In my experience, however, the entrepreneurship camp is pretty live-and-let-live. The whole “cut everything you don't care about so you can spend whatever you'd like on the things you do care about” school of thought. When you think about it, this makes sense for a few reasons.

• We all have different skill sets to be utilized in our respective side hustles.
• Different skills mean different pricing schemes.
• We all have different work and family situations that we're fitting said side hustles in around.
• We all care about spending our money on different things, and those things cost different amounts and reflect our tastes and values.

Long story short, what this means is that sometimes it's difficult to talk about investment and entrepreneurial issues in a way that applies to everyone.

Recently I read a blog post so glum I wondered how I might do a well-being check on its anonymous author. “The vacation high wears off” at The Quest for $85,000 describes the aftermath of a trip to visit aging family members. Now the writer's own life feels “shorter” and the three years until her husband's retirement seem unbearably long.

She writes:

It's three more years of watching our precious time on this planet circle the drain. This is what one gets when one spends every single f*cking cent with no regard for the future…I am regretful beyond belief.

If

Every couple has its own way of managing money. Some folks share their finances completely. Some — like my wife and me — keep their finances completely separate. Most couples fall somewhere between these two extremes.

Writing for the June issue of Redbook magazine, Virginia Sole-Smith highlighted what she calls the new money rules for couples. Experts don't agree on how couples should manage their money, Sole-Smith says. That's because there's no "one size fits all" solution. What's most important is to find a system that works for you and your circumstances:

Clearly, the real experts are you and your partner, and it's critical to find an arrangement that suits your exact situation, as pairs who bicker over bills once a week or more are 30 percent more likely to get divorced than those who squabble about it less, according to research from Utah State University.

Though J.D.'s back on the blog, he's still a bit behind — so much e-mail! — so here's a guest-post from Tim Ellis, who writes Seattle Bubble when he isn't glued to a screen, zoned out on video games. You can find him playing as "TH3 T1M" on Xbox Live and on PSN.

I've been an avid gamer ever since I bought my first Nintendo Entertainment System when I was ten. Today I have a Wii, an Xbox 360, and a PS3. My library of games includes major titles including the big Mario and Halo games, LittleBigPlanet, Batman: Arkham Asylum... you get the picture.

Even with a serious untreated gaming addiction, I manage to spend just a few hundred dollars a year on my gaming habit. (I'm not rich, after all.) I bought all three of the consoles mentioned above for a combined total of about $400 (today's retail price: $800), and I rarely spend more than $20 on a game, despite the fact that most titles retail for $50 to $60. Here are a few of the tricks I use to indulge in my gaming habit without laying waste to my carefully-constructed budget.