My Net Worth is Almost Out of the Negative and Other Financial News

In graduate school, I took a business course as part of my specialization track in integrated healthcare.  As part of this course, we calculated our net worth (assets-liabilities).  We were in our third year of grad school by that point, and almost everyone had six figures of student loan debt- myself included.  I remember how we all laughed at just how negative our net worth was, but I also remember how huge that number seemed and how hopeless it felt.

My original six figures of student loan debt (146K) are now whittled down to a middling five figures and are finally an amount that doesn't make me sick to look at.  My loan interest rates are super low (half is at less than 2%, half is at less than 1%) so I'm not in a big rush to pay it off, but it's still nice to see how much progress has been made over the almost seven years that I've been licensed.

I've managed to stash some cash in retirement funds and in savings, so today I did a quick net worth estimate and found that I'm only 15K in the negative now!!  I'm sure some of you are laughing at my excitement, but when I started at 146K in the red, negative 15K feels really good!  I also know that it won't take me very long to finally FINALLY be in the black and moving toward a positive net worth.

In other good news, I found out this week that my credit score is around 820, which I'm excited about.  I'm hoping to buy another house next year or the year after and this will help me get the best interest rates on a house loan.  I'm determined to put down 20-25% next time to avoid PMI, but I am an impatient sort and waiting and slogging through slow monthly savings has been hard when I want it now.  I'm sure it's building patience or some other good character trait...

I'm still working on decluttering and have sold a bunch of stuff in my flea market booth.  A post on my experiences with the booth is in the works!