The Carnival of Debt Reduction: It’s A Marathon, Not A Sprint Edition! is up over at Man vs. Debt, and they've added a link to my post about being (mostly) short-term debt free.

Take a look at the carnival and some of the great posts about fighting debt.

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.

Well, I did my last debt update in January, and like political candidate who has gained his targeted office, have been promising to do another one each month since then. Now, I'm ready to make good on my promise.

Here's the rundown for the last three months:

February

March

I have two Washington Mutual credit cards. Since Chase bought out WaMu last year, I've been receiving mail and e-mail messages about the conversion of WaMu credit card accounts to Chase credit card accounts.

One of the best features of WaMu credit cards is that they allow you to view your monthly updated FICO credit score as reported by TransUnion for free. Unfortunately, according to an e-mail I got from WaMu this morning, this freebie is soon going the way of the mastadon. Here's the relevant text of the e-mail.

Well, it's the new year and I'm already late with my first debt update. Hopefully that's not the trend-setter for all my goals this year!

Anyway, here's this month's chart:

My younger brother came over yesterday to watch the Eagles/Giants (go Eagles!) and Chargers/Steelers games. During and after the games, our conversations turned to various financial topics. As we talked, I discovered that while he had heard about credit scores, he did not know anything about his credit report. So, I showed him one of my recent reports, explained all the various parts of it, and by the end he was chomping at the bit to see his own report.

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:

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:

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've been making use of a 30-day free trial of TransUnion's TrueCredit 3-credit-report monitoring service. Each day (almost) I've been pulling a new report and see updated FAKO credit scores. I even used it to help get two baddies removed from all three of my reports.