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Credit • Debt • Finances & Money

Personal Finance Bloggers are getting rid of debt!

April 28, 2009
By Cleverdude
- Leave a Comment

Since starting this blog 3 years ago, we’ve shed almost $90,000 in non-mortage debt! All we have left is about $12,500 on my Honda Ridgeline loan and under $10,000 on my student loan (need to update the debt scales for April). I haven’t really sat down to think about that great accomplishment, mainly because we still have over $20,000 in consumer and education debt on our plate. However, for now my student loan is deferred as I’m back in school (6 credits for a graduate degree will do that).

But in the last few days, I’ve seen two other bloggers make major accomplishments:

– First, Tricia from Blogging Away Debt tackled the credit card beast and paid off over $37,000 in credit card debt. We started with about $20,000 (it peaked at $25,000 actually), so I know that monkey on your back!

– Next, Chief Family Officer is debt-free (except for the mortgage)! Follow the link to find out more about how they accomplished such a major feat.

Congratulations to both bloggers, and to all you readers who are pursuing a life of debt-freedom. However, many of us will never be totally debt-free, since we’ll probably have mortgages, but there is such a thing as “good, bad and ugly debt“. Your first goal is to get rid of the bad and ugly, and then focus on reducing the “good” debt. We all need a place to live and a decent education or training to find good employment.

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About Cleverdude

Mike founded CleverDude.com in June 2006 while working as a technical analyst in the Washington, D.C. area. A Penn State graduate, he built the site as a side project alongside a white-collar career that included earning a master’s degree and multiple promotions.

In five years he wrote nearly 1,300 articles on personal finance and life lessons drawn from his own experience. The blog grew from a hobby into a recognized early voice in the personal-finance community and generated meaningful revenue. He sold the site in 2010, continued as a guest contributor through 2015, and returned in 2023 after further career advances, paying off his home, and extensive travel.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. SaveBuyLive says

    April 28, 2009 at 8:53 am

    Congratulations to you on making it so far on paying off your debts. Keep up the good work!

    Reply
  2. Nate @ Debt-free Scholar says

    April 28, 2009 at 8:58 am

    Congratulations! Good job tackling that debt. You will have the rest done in now time!

    – Nate

    Reply
  3. Tricia says

    April 28, 2009 at 12:02 pm

    Thanks for the congrats, Clever Dude 🙂

    You have done some major debt-busting yourself! As NCN would say…YOU ROCK!!! 🙂

    Reply
  4. My Journey says

    April 28, 2009 at 1:26 pm

    I am the worst at updating on my blog…but I am down from alomst $17,000 in CC Debt to approximately 4 or 5 since Aug of last year!

    Reply
  5. J. Money says

    April 28, 2009 at 1:29 pm

    Hell yeah Team PF! Good work everyone.

    Reply
  6. Cathy @ Chief Family Officer says

    April 28, 2009 at 9:11 pm

    Wow! Thanks so much for the highlight, Clever Dude!

    You’ve done amazingly well, too – that’s a LOT of money you’ve paid back already. I totally understand where you’re at, but be impressed with your accomplishments – I am!

    Reply
  7. Sherin says

    April 29, 2009 at 8:35 am

    Excellant !!!!! even this blog post giving extra energy to finance blogger. congrats for maintaining relations with bloggers around you to get undated information time to time.

    Reply
  8. ChristianPF says

    April 29, 2009 at 9:59 am

    Wow, $90K, that is impressive! Man isn’t it fun paying off debt?

    Reply
  9. Do You Dave Ramsey? says

    May 2, 2009 at 11:01 am

    Nice work! Keep it up! I know from my own experience how it feels to shed those layers of debt…

    We were just about to finish when I accepted a buyout so we put our aggressive debt reduction on hold. But as I zero in on landing a new job I’m so eager to get going again!

    Thanks for sharing an motivating!
    Dave

    Reply
  10. Matt Jabs says

    May 8, 2009 at 7:50 am

    In January of this year I started with just over $15K of high interest revolving debt and have it down to under $12K, so have paid off over $3,000 in just 4 months.

    I CANNOT WAIT to pay off this portion of my debt. After doing so will have just student loans & mortgages left, which I will then start hitting heavy!

    Good blog…very clever 😉 (pun intended). I’m following now, both on Twitter & RSS. Found you via an @fcn tweet (I’m an author on FCN).

    Cheers!

    Reply

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