I had a couple of outstanding non-mortgage loans (mostly arising from my beautiful Buffy cat's illnesses). I paid them off this morning, so now the only debt is my mortgage (down to $19,500 so the end is in sight) and credit cards, which are a rolling balance. I typically use the first paycheck of the month to pay down loans and the second to pay down credit cards, so the CC balance is around $3k right now and that will come down when the next paycheck arrives on 1/16.
Banks use a "debt-to-income" ratio to evaluate people for loans and this cut mine significantly.
I also changed my retirement contributions from 18.5% to my 401(k) down to 6% (which will get me the full company match of 5%). That's because I need to build up a year's worth of savings in a taxable brokerage account, which I will be able to tap into without a tax consequence after retirement. The ~$400 per month I was paying towards those two loans will also be redirected to brokerage savings.
I also did some calculations and I am on track to be able to retire in 3 years. (Possibly less, possibly more; this is an approximate target.)
Also started tracking spending and have started going through my subscriptions and canceling ones I don't use.
January 7th, 2026 at 02:47 am 1767754050
January 7th, 2026 at 06:55 am 1767768900
All these changes, are they because of rolling towards your retirement in a few years? I’m just double checking what exactly is going on because sometimes I don’t really understand what’s happening haha.
January 7th, 2026 at 02:33 pm 1767796411
However, I really did accelerate the debt payoff when the small family-owned company that I work for was sold, first in August 2024 to another advisor group (owned in turn by private equity), expanding us from being part of a 2-office, 23-employee firm to being part of a 11-office, 113-employee firm.
Then in August 2025, the group that bought us was itself bought (again by a firm owned by private equity), making us part of a 700+ office, 11,000 employee firm.
Those changes made me decide that it was essential to get out of debt so that if I were unhappy at work, I could step away.