bye, bye car payment

We met with a financial adviser a week ago and faced the hard reality that we can't really consider buying a house until some major loans are paid off. We knew this, although it was fun to dream. By dream I mean spend hours online look at house listings, drive by the cute ones, plan to go to open houses. Now, Shea is banned from sending me "cool!" links to houses. Because when I get those I start dreaming about things like closet space, and this is a gateway drug to hallways, pantries and yards.

We did get confirmation that we're on the right track. That we're living below our means and saving a lot, which was pretty cool. And then we took our pretty sizable house fund and used it to pay off some loans. First up, the car loan. It was set to be paid of in January 2013. It's May 2010. You do the math. No seriously, it's too early for me to do math. Compound and simple interest is knowledge I left safely in a high school classroom where it belongs. But those handy dandy online calculators, which have eliminated the validity math teacher's claims of "you'll need this someday," tell me that we saved almost $1,000 in interest.

Do you see those big fat zeros? Does it make you want to do a spontaneous happy dance at your desk?