The bonus check came last week. We paid off our Disney cruise and mailed a check for $1000 to our mortgage company for extra principle. Since we refinanced earlier this year, we've been rounding up our automatic payment and therefore already putting an extra $150/month towards the mortgage. But writing that check for $1000 was a little harder than I thought!

I think it was hard because we have such a long road to paying off our mortgage. Our plan is to pay it off in about 8 years. I've worked up a schedule by month to get us there. Sure, if we have any "extra" money floating around we might make it there faster. But I don't want to get too obsessed with paying it off early because I'm afraid I will start going too extreme on penny pinching and regret it. We also need to pay off the rest of our car loan (1.9% interest) and save up for another car.

I'm going to figure out what our 2013 extra principle goal is and have that to shoot for. Because otherwise it's just too overwhelming!

Yesterday I mailed off checks for our HOA dues and property taxes. So this is the first year that we've ended the year with all our bills paid (including our vacation pre-paid) and money in our emergency fund. Yay!