Today marks the first paycheck I've received that I do not have to put money toward old credit card debt. And boy, does that feel good.

It's been more than two years since I started a concerted effort to pay down my debt completely. Like many journeys, I haven't exactly taken a straight path. I meandered a bit, threaded my way between the trees, climbed over some logs, splashed in a creek, pushed through nettle-bushes, wound around.... Okay, I suppose you get the picture. Despite my diversions, there's always been one general direction, one destination, one goal. Now, I've reached it.

How I got here

I used several strategies to pay down my debt.

Restored my credit score: I had some negative items on my credit report. One of them was a collection item that I had sucessfully removed in June 2007. The other was a late payment that I got removed last October. Although the fruits of these efforts ripened well into the season of my debt paydown, I started working on them early in the process. Cleaning up your credit report and fixing your score requires a lot of attention to detail, letter writing and patience.

Refinance: One of the benefits of improving your credit report and score is the ability to take advantage of better credit offers. In August 2007, after I had the aforementioned collection item removed from my report, I did my first-ever "app-o-rama" (AOR) – which is basically just applying for a bunch of credit cards at the same time and hoping you get a few good ones. You need a decent credit score to even consider doing something like this, because simply applying for a bunch of credit cards will cause your score to take a hit (for about six months or so). The success of my AOR allowed me to take advantage of some 0% offers from Discover and Citi Business, as well as some free-money deals from Bank of America and Citi. In June 2008, I did another, slightly larger AOR to keep the nectar of 0% flowing.

Save, save, save!: This is the heart of my plan. It's impossible to consistently pay down debt unless you dedicate money to your plan. About two years ago, I got a pretty hefty raise, which allowed me to start setting aside at least $500 per month through a targeted direct deposit plan (my employer allows me to split my paycheck between up to eight different accounts). This money went directly into a high-yield savings account that I made sure was not easily accessible. Putting this money aside right away and making it kind of a pain in the anatomy to get a hold of was crucial to my plan. I put "found" money, such as money from tax returns, bonuses, side income and free-money deals, into my debt repayment coffer as well.

Reduce spending: If saving is the heart of my repayment plan, cutting spending is the rest of the circulatory system. The only way to get out of debt is to spend less than you earn. Period. At times I did better at this than others – in particular, I made two specific purchases that set me back about four months and that I probably could have waited to make. Overall, though, I was able to significantly reduce my spending simply by budgeting. At the same time as I started setting aside money for debt repayment, I created several other "virtual accounts" that I began contributing to on a regular basis: Gifts, clothes, home/car repair, kids accounts, and so on. This "personal escrow" setup gave me a caché of cash from which I could pay for needs and wants without putting myself into further trouble.

Find money: There are a lot of ways to make money, some of them easier than others. I did a number of things to find money, including:

• Working smart at my job and ensuring that my bosses know I am indispensable, thereby earning salary increases and bonuses.
• Looking for opportunities to generate side income, such as doing some website development for a friend's cousin.
• Participating in selected free-money deals by opening various types of financial accounts.

Balance transfer arbitrage: Refinancing my debt at 0% helped me in two ways – it allowed me to stop wasting money on finance charges, and it also let me place most of my money in a high-yield savings account where I earned even more money through the miracle of compounding. At times, I even took out more debt, through balance transfers, than I originally had. This let me earn even more interest, thus ultimately allowing me to pay down my debt faster than I otherwise could. As I stated above, keeping this money separate and hard to access is they key to success – getting a balance transfer and then spending that money would be disastrous.

Ignore personal finance "gurus": Dave Ramsey, Suze Orman, Robert Kiyosaki – they're all dunderheads. I know, I know, a lot people swear by the advice that these "professionals" give, but the fact is they really don't have anything unique to say. There's nothing in any of their books that you can't find out for free with a public access computer at a library. I learned about various financial tricks and techniques mostly through blogs and free articles, plus a healthy dose of common sense (instilled in me by my mom, who is an avid budgeter and deal seeker). You can see a list of my favorite personal finance blogs in the right-hand sidebar on all the pages of this site – all of these sites are there because I read them regularly.

And there you have it. I just mixed these ingredients together, put them into the oven and set the timer for two years, and voilá, I take out a nice, hot, fresh pie of debt-free that I can savor.

So now what?

A celebration. I'm gonna get four hundred of my best friends together, fly them all to Cancun, and rack up thousand of dollars in massive credit card debt. (As a result of my various AORs I have $95,000 in available lines of credit, which would cover a lot of rum punch and scuba gear rentals.) Who wants to join me?

Of course, that would just be stupid. More rationally, I have several medium- and long-term goals that I am going to focus on for now:

• Build an emergency fund – I started on this, but haven't determined the actual amount I will need yet
• Fully fund IRA – $5,000 (or $416.67/month)
• Establish education accounts for my two kids, probably 529s – not sure amount yet, but I have about $3,700 so far
• Vacation account – again, I'm not sure how much at this point, but vacations have not been as much of a planned event in the past as I would like

And as always, I'll note my progress toward these goals right here.