Almost cried at my desk" is the realest part of this whole thing. Two grand is not a small deal when you have been scraping by. Most people I know could not cover a $500 emergency, so having $2,000 sitting there means you did something right for a long time. The boring part is how you got there, which is just not spending on dumb stuff over and over for months. Nobody claps for that, but it adds up. Keep going, the next thousand comes faster than the first one did.