Today is the day that my wife and I (36 and 32 respectively) are now completely 100% debt free! With the final sum paid to my student loan, we now completely lack the following: A mortgage, auto loans, student loans, credit card debt! ZERO!
I started reading MMM about a year and a half ago. At the time we owed about $70,000 on our home and had only about $60,000 in our retirement accounts. I'm finishing up my PhD, so my income is modest. My wife makes less than $50,000 per year. We drove two newer (paid for) cars and didn't worry about our finances too much. We've never owned cable, but the amazon delivery man was at our doorstep nearly every day (as an academi, I had a bit of a book problem!).
Since converting to mustachianism, we've sold one of our newer cars and bought an older one. That netted about $6,000; it went straight into the mortgage. Our house is now on the market and we're looking to build our own in a smaller town where all forms of commuting by car can be happily done away with. Our retirement accounts are only up slightly, since debt reduction has been the name of the game. We paid off our mortgage this last June. In addition to this, I've started a little side hustle selling fine art photography!
We have a nice little spreadsheet that shows us happily financially independent in 10 years or less.
And the crazy thing is, the piece of mind these moves have given us are the very things that are making it possible for us to move to a smaller community and work from home together. Under those conditions, I'm not sure how much different financial independence will even feel when we get there!
As an aside, I'm a theologian, and I've done quite a bit of worrying about how deeply invested I've become in all this FI scheming. I used to worry that I was hanging my heart on rather base material things in this pursuit. However, the more I've thought about it, and the more I've practiced it, it seems that the opposite is true! This path has led me to eschew material possessions. It's not a matter of worshiping at the alter of the stock market. Instead what is really happening is that we are escaping from a servitude we should have never been under! Frugal living has become a deeply humanizing endeavor!
I'm eagerly awaiting what the next several years will bring! Glad to be with you on the journey.