Thanks to Pete’s resources, we spent about a trillion dollars less than we used to, and put that money towards wonderful things: 1) an extra $25k towards our mortgage, 2) major increases to our retirement accounts (from 10% up to 20% per person), 3) I quit my very good desk job and started my own consulting firm, and 4) I make enough money in self employment to only have to work part-time, which means Baby #1 is on the way and I’ll get to have an actual work-life balance. Now that I work from home, we’re also in the process of moving so that we’ll be 5 minutes from my husband’s job (we read one of Pete’s blog posts about how people should live as close as possible to work, and we were like, duh that’s so obvious, we should do that too).

My specific financial questions have changed, but some big-picture questions remain: For those of us who aren’t in debt, how do we best use the “extra” money? We don’t have credit card debt, school loans, or car loans. Extra money could go towards paying off the mortgage on our condo early (in another city – we rent it out), or saving for a second home, or saving extra for retirement. Do we put our money towards all 3 big ticket items at the same time, or is there some strategy involved, like focusing on the mortgage for a year, and then focusing on a down payment, and so on?