Today is a fabulous day

After several setbacks in our refinancing saga, we closed on our loan today - at 3.75% fixed for 30 years. AWESOME. I've never been so excited to pay off bills. As of next Wednesday, Jay and I will have $0 in consumer debt, have the funds available to finish our house (HVAC, crawlspace insulation, new shed/shop, privacy fence), have 4 months worth of emergency savings, and last but not least will have our Australia/New Zealand trip paid for. Oh, and did I mention that the refinance will also be saving us $500 a month? So with our new savings plan, we will be socking away 10% of our income, which we should really be doing anyway. We had been doing a great job with our savings, but car repairs or other unexpected expenses would always chip away at the account. My 401k is also quite happy these days. Financial stability is feeling mighty great.

To save even more, we've been thinking of getting rid of DirecTV, but our favorite shows are on SyFy, which doesn't work well with Hulu Plus or Netflix. Rather annoying. In three more years, we will also have paid off our DR timeshare (although I expect that we'll get suckered into the next level when we go back) and Jay's student loan will also be paid off, saving us even more money each month. We're keeping his student loan since the interest rate is so low.

I'm also getting a massage after work (a gift from one of my coworkers that I finally booked - great timing!)... plus Jay and I are going out to dinner to celebrate our loan closing! 

I've lost 8 pounds so far on Atkins. Not as much weight as I was hoping to lose in a month, but it's progress. I'm hoping to lose at least 16 pounds before our trip. However, as long as I lose at least 12 pounds before May, I will be back within "normal" limits. To weigh what I did when Jay and I started dating, I will need to lose about 25 more pounds. However, I would be happy with a 23.1 BMI (losing an additional 18 lbs or total weight loss of 26 lbs).

That's it for now! Hope to post about some of our New Zealand activities over the weekend. :)