Bleeding Money

Now that we've got plenty of breathing room each month, and the credit cards are at a point that we could pay them off entirely (if we wiped out our emergency fund, that is), we haven't been very focused at staying on track. We've been eating out a lot (at least 3-4 times/week, usually a lot more), I haven't been clipping or using grocery coupons, and we've allowed our miscellaneous spending to creep up.

Hubby also decided to buy a new car, it's been ordered but won't come in for a month or so. Although he could pay off the remaining credit cards, he's decided to instead focus on putting as much as possible for a down payment ($3000+), that way the monthly payments will be less. I'm not sure of the final price, but it will be in the $25k range. It'll be financed over 5 years, so we'll have payments of roughly $400/month.

Our other car's payments are $350/month, with almost a year and a half left.

I hate that we're taking out that much more debt, especially when the existing car was only just paid off and still runs fine... but the reality is that we're wasting at least that much in eating out and other non-frugal spending each month too.

At any rate, we haven't made much headway lately. In fact, we "reallocated" $4k from the short-term savings/emergency fund to put towards the down payment and an upcoming Florida vacation.

We're currently left with $6k in savings, which is a healthy start but nowhere near where our emergency fund should be.