Great progress. How has it felt as you made the changes? Easy/difficult/depriving/empowering/etc.?
It takes a little more effort to plan ahead for bringing lunches every day. Eating out normally costs me $8-$9, 4x/week, so right there I'm saving $1700 annually.
Waxing my own legs was DH's idea. He actually helps me. I may do another separate forum post on this. The kit (with the little crockpot to heat the wax, plus the wax and applicators and various creams & potions) was about $40 on Amazon. My DH made a joke about how long it would take us to amortize the savings. :P This is tedious to do, but it only happens about once a month. Annual savings ~ $880
Random spending on this & that = a lot more than I thought. Hard to quantify this, as I haven't studied my bank statements. Let's say $300 or so a month, for $3600 annual savings.
Paying off the debt early is both exciting and not fun at all. I just want them GONE so I can put more money into investments.
Taking advantage of the 401(k) is great, but I'm also slapping myself for not taking advantage of the employer match sooner, and also for missing out on buying the S&P 500 when it was "on sale."
The weirdest part of all this? When I have a "bad" day (i.e., I spend $7-$8 unnecessarily) I feel AWFUL. I want, more than anything, to get out of debt (should happen within 15 months) and then to put that money toward Early Retirement.