I started my post-college life with a little bit of credit card debt, and a massive load of student loans. I was blessed with an above average paycheck and soon found the greatest woman on the planet and took her as my wife. Not only was she beautiful and smart, she is also the most financially disciplined being in this universe - spending money is her kryptonite.
Before we were married, I bought a foolish car (brand new, fully financed, but should last 100k+ miles) and we bought a house. In total, we probably had around 400k in liabilities when we were 24 (that's hard to think about).
We paid off the car in about nine months, and began focusing on the second mortgage we had. We paid off the second mortgage and rolled our payments into the primary mortgage, always trying to pay more principal than interest. Meanwhile, minimum payments were being made to the student loans.
Then the housing market crashed, despite having 80k of our purchase price paid off, our house is another 60k underwater beyond that.
This past year I was feeling discouraged about the progress being made on paying off our house, so five months ago I redirected all our additional principle to my student loans. Along with some RSU vesting, I was able to knock those out this past month, leaving our mortgage as our only remaining liability.
Over the past month I consumed Debt is Slavery and Your Money or Your Life, and Early Retirement Extreme is waiting for me at the library. I've calculated that under optimal circumstances, with our current rate of savings, we could be financially independent in about six years, while paying slightly more than the minimum payment on our mortgage (so we would not need to work for income, but we'd still have a mortgage payment). Alternatively, it would take about 5 years to pay off our mortgage if we directed all of that additional income into the mortgage instead of the `stache.
In either case, I feel like we are out of short term financial goals (things that can be accomplished in a quarter, half a year, or in the next year).
What do you do in these long cycles to ensure you are staying on track? Are there smaller goals I with obvious markers I can add along the way? Have others reached FinInd with a mortgage payment or other long term liability?