Congrats!! I’m looking forward to a snowball in 2019.
What’s a piece of advice you’d give to others who are still fighting the uphill battle of debt repayment (if you had to deal with that)?
We didn't really have to deal with debt. Both DW and I paid our way through grad school and each got master's degrees in the last 10 years which cost about $25k each. So for about 4 years, we were paying $13k in tuition per year while working our day jobs. This is an example of how frugality and savings open up possibilities to do things other people can't - all we had to do was reduce our savings rate. (Our friends were financing SUVs at the time.) The effect of the degrees on our income was immediate, and the payback period for that investment was less than 2 years. If I had it to do over again, and debt was the only option, I'd do it and pay off the debt in 2-3 years. That said, we didn't exactly pursue degrees in aquatic basket arts and we didn't attend costly "prestige" universities either.
We have a large (to us) mortgage that we've never prepaid because we think we can earn more that its interest rate in index funds. That arbitrage obviously worked out well for the past few years.
Also, we run a rolling $2,500 credit card balance for the 2% cash back and pay it off each month. This is essentially a loan at a negative interest rate. Yes, please.
TL;DR - our debt management habits don't really resemble most people's situations.
