Life Without Credit Cards: One Year Later

It was May of 2009 when my wife and I closed our last remaining credit card. How, you ask, have we survived? Very well, thank you. We found that most places (not all) will allow us to use our debit cards as credit cards (to run the transactions through Visa's system which gives us the same fraud protection as a credit card).
In the few cases where the card reader won't run it as a credit card, we simply enter our pin numbers. Most of the time, however, we spend cash.
But what about our credit scores? Did they take a hit when we closed those accounts? Funny you should ask. I've been thinking about checking my credit score over the course of the last couple of weeks, so today I finally checked my score on MyFico.com (use Retailmenot.com for discount codes, I got my score for $11 instead of the retail price of $16).
After creating an account and opting out of their email solicitations, I got to see my Equifax score. Guess what: my score is 778. I believe that's higher than it has ever been. The only negative item on my credit report is that there is no recent activity on my revolving accounts. I guess I'll be seeing that notice the rest of my life, as I've decided not to borrow money except for our next home purchase.
Our only outstanding debt is our mortgage. It appears that an outstanding mortgage alone is enough to prop up a FICO score.
Why did I want to see my FICO score? The first reason is that my wife and I are thinking about replacing our Vonage phone service with two smart phones in the near future (more on that in a later post). When we sign up for the required two year service contract, they will run credit reports one one or both of us. I wanted to be sure that we wouldn't be denied when we went and purchased the phones. The second reason is that I wanted to see if closing our accounts would have a negative affect on our credit score.
Finding out that my score is that high debunks the myth that closing a credit card account negatively affects your credit score. I have also learned that we can live quite well without a credit card.
What are your experiences without credit cards? Please post in the comments below.

We're Debt Free: One Year Later

It's been one year and a month since my wife and I paid off our last debt (not including our house). How are we doing financially? We've been able to save over half of our 6 month emergency fund. Over the last six months, we've had to repair my car a couple of times, and replace our water heater.
Because we don't have any debt payments, we've been able to cover our emergencies, and in some cases, work it into our budget without touching our emergency fund.
During the six months when we were paying off debt, we tightened up the budget so much that it seemed like we were holding our breath. Once we wrote that last check, it felt like we could breathe again. We've since loosened up the budget and we don't save as much per month as we probably should. We're still saving regularly, which is the most important thing. Once we've met our six month emergency savings goal, we'll start buying the things we've been putting off for the last couple of years.
Would I make the decision to go back into debt? Definitely not. Once you find out how stress-free it is to live without payments, you'll agree that life is better on this side.