Aw man congrats to you guys!

Marcus, your progress is amazing. I'm so glad to see you're on fire with enthusiasm, once the debt is gone for you two.

No debt means you can DREAM. Yay! Good job, man!

Sandi

Congrats on getting those cards paid!!! Feels great to realize that debt is gone, right? That wonderful feeling often pushes people to eliminate their other debt even faster. You'll be out of the woods soon. And good for you for setting up the ING fund (when you do. In fact, you could start that now with just a few dollars a month, for symbolic purposes). You can't spend what you don't think you have, is my motto!

And yes, keep dreaming. Sandi and peachy are right!

So small update today, I am pretty much at the end of the month, and I have $900 left over in our account. I can't think of the last time that happened, plus I still have about 3k billed out that I am waiting for it to come in.

For right now the $900 is going into savings and not the credit cards, my wife is having some health issues right now and I will probably need some cash for upcoming doctor visits and tests, etc. However I probably will not have to spend much on this since I am very lucky to have great health insurance through my employer.

I'm glad you have extra money, but..how much are your copays? You may be able to estimate how many appointments she has and see that you only need 100 out of the 900. Especially if you have insurance. Remember, no excuses.

What does your savings look like now? It'll be easy to pay off #3 or #8, so maybe you should go on and pay them, and when it's time for copays, pay it out of your checking account. You both get paid every two weeks, right? There should be money for copays out of that fund. The bigger bills won't come until later if need be, but get those CC monkeys off your back!

I hope your wife is feeling better soon.

I think maybe it could be a good idea to keep a sorta 'medical emergency fund' on hand until you get it all sorted out.

I know my co-pays, but I have no idea how much it will cost for this, I am afraid it could be something somewhat serious wrong and I don't want to be worried about not being able to pay for tests that need done. If it turns out we get this taken care of for $100-$200 that is great, I can put the rest on cards, but if it costs a grand, I need to come up with the money and I don't want to be worrying about my wife's health and where the money is going to be coming from.

So I guess the answer is you still don't have any savings. 1000 dollars is NOT a lot of money.

Now that you paid off your other credit cards, you should use the money that was going to your cc's (500, 1000 or whatever), and put it into a savings account-EVERY PAYCHECK or MONTH (depending on how you paid them). With that money you'll build up an emergency fund so that when something tragic happens, you have a backup plan.

This is why you make a plan. Things always happen to everyone. The difference is some people are prepared and others are not. Wouldn't it be nice to be in the prepared column, so you can focus on your wife and not the $$? Just think about it.

That has actually been on the plan, I just am having to re-arrange a bit since she is sick now. The original plan was to pay off all the credit cards, then get at least a $1000 in our ING account, then start on saving for our next house, getting the next car for my wife, etc.

The extra almost $500 that I was paying on my cards is not ever going to just go to my checking account where I can spend it, I am fully intending on it being redirected to my ING account where we can handle it depending on the current goals we are pursuing.

So to review where I am at right now since I think this got broken up a bit:

1) We just paid off a bit over $6,000 in credit card debt a month or so ago
2) We have just under $2,000 in credit card debt left.
3) As of today, I have $900 in my saving account at my local bank and $200 in my ING account. I am going to be holding onto this money for the next month to pay for any potential medical expenses (which are unknown right now) and whatever is left over will either be transferred to my ING account as an emergency fund or applied to the remainder of our credit card debt
4) I have about $3,000 currently billed out for sidework, this money will pay off the remainder of the credit card debt, and the rest will go into our ING account.
5) As soon as I pay off the last of the credit card debt the money I have been paying on them (roughly $400/month) will be redirected directly to my ING account (I will be talking to my employer and having them direct deposit the amount to my ING).

As far as my short term goals, here is what I am thinking:

1) Pay off the credit cards
2) Get a $1,000 emergency fund into my ING account
3) Save up and buy a newer vehicle for my wife (Under 2k)
4) Start a Roth IRA and setup an automatic $200/month to go into it
5) Pad emergency fund up to $4,000
6) Save for down payment and expenses to sell my current house (purchased at 132k) and move to a cheaper house (Hopefully in the 40k-60k range)

I know it probably seems that I'm hard on you, but I don't always mean to come off that way.

I like your plan, and I hope that you can stick to it.

Do you have any extra stuff lying around the house that you could sell? Do you have more sidework coming up? You're lucky to have sidework; it makes getting bills paid off and boosting your efund that much faster.

Ah, I expect you guys to be hard on me, keeps me on track better

As for stuff to sell, yes, I have a few things I am planning on selling, just haven't taken the time yet to sell them, don't expect to get more than about $150 total for it though. There really isn't a lot for us to sell from around the house.

My side work is hit and miss, I was just talking to one of my contacts and they might have another good sized project coming through, but it will likely be a month or two before I start on it, and its for the one client I work with that I have trouble getting paid from, so I wouldn't be able to count on getting paid for the work in less than a year.

I am currently spending my time writing two different software products that I can market and sell on my own, they have the potential to make a decent amount of money, but nothing I can count on for quite some time, for now they just cost me time and I can only hope the time invested will pay off. It is pretty slow going on my own products though as I do any paying projects first so I don't get to work on my own all that often.

Time for another update.

I am very glad I saved that money back for medical for my wife, we got her into the doctor had some blood tests done and the next day the doctor called and told her to get to the ER immediately. Turns out she was anemic to the point she was borderline coma, they were surprised she was able to sit up and talk to them, so very long night last night with 4 blood transfusions and tests yesterday morning and today.

I have no idea how much this is going to cost, I am hoping nothing to major, but I think we are good for now. I have really good insurance and for that I am very thankful. for now I am not thinking about the money side, just tried to help my wife through this medical disaster.

Just figured I would update you guys, I will put an update up when she gets out of the hospital and also when I find out what the financial damages were.

I hope she's feeling better soon, marcus! Health is the most important thing to be focusing on right now, you're absolutely right.

P.S. It's great to have some emergency funds available, isn't it? In the past you would have just put the medical expenses on a credit card...

I'm glad the doctors were able to figure out what was wrong with your wife. How scary.

I hope they can find a way to make her better permanently.

They are working on figuring out the cause now, my wife was released from the hospital yesterday. It looks like we are going to be spending quite alot of time going back and forth to different doctors over the next few weeks.