The Jan. 6 edition of the Carnival of Debt Reduction has been posted over at American Consumer News and it includes my post on the catharsis of paying of large swaths of debt.

A few other posts you might enjoy reading include:

As of yesterday, it costs 5% more to travel on the New York State Thruway. As usual, the increased is justified with the promise of future maintenance projects.

Of course, this just a couple weeks after Governor Paterson listed a host of tax and fee increases he wants to implement to help account for budget shortfalls, including an 18% sales tax on soda.

I used to be in the habit of giving debt updates near the middle of each month. I dropped out of that habit awhile ago, but would like to start doing so again.

I debated whether to give my debt update for December, or whether to start with January. Ultimately, I decided to provide a December update, even though it's not necessarily a good one, because I already know that January will show much improvement.

Also, I'm changing the format to a screenshot of my net worth spreadsheet, rather than the table I used previously, for simplicity's sake. And here it is:

I wasn't the most consistent blogger last year, but I managed at least one post in each month except April. I am a little disappointed in the number of posts I wrote (42), which was a little more than half as many as the previous year (77). Most of these were in the latter half of the year, when I renewed my vigor and will to succeed.

Mighty Bargain Hunter is wondering what to do with a state quarter collection that he and his wife recently finished assembling. Not having been one to collect state quarters, all of his suggestions seem valid (I would probably choose a combination of 1 and 3), except for selling it which likely would be more of a hassle than it's worth.

Today I paid off approximately $9,800 in credit card debt, and boy does that ever feel good.

According to the debt reduction plan I set up in Aug. 2007, I had intended to pay down approximately $9,200 of my then-current debt amount, which was about $10,000, by the end of this year. That would have left me with approximately $800 in debt, that I was hoping I could either pay off immediately or refinance.

I got a new iPod Touch a few days ago and wanted to test posting to a blog. It's nice for short posts but would be tedious for the meandering treatises I am wont to scribe.

Apparently, I was in danger of losing some of the most-watched channels in my house, to wit, Nickelodeon and Noggin. In short, I found out this morning that Viacom was threatening to pull 19 of its channels from Time Warner cable networks across the country because of a fee increase dispute.

I will admit that I returned a few Christmas gifts this year. There's usually a couple in my pile each year that I find aren't quite what I wanted. This year only three things begged to be brought back: Two movies and a shirt.

I live in New York. Not in the City, but that doesn't matter because City politicians still decide a lot of the crappy laws that get passed here.

But I digress, this post is about soda. I've been trying to quit drinking Mountain Dew for literally years, mostly to help me lose (more) weight as well as save some money. The problem is that I love the stuff. It's the nectar of the gods, as far as I'm concerned. The longest I've gone without drinking it is about two weeks.