I started the last reply before several more of you came in asking more questions, so in order to not have a super long post I thought I would break it up.
On our mower - We own 5 acres of land that all must be mowed with a lot of trees. A large section will be used for gardening/green house to produce most of our food. Selling and getting a different/smaller one would be an optional, especially as more of our land becomes less "mowable."
On my wife's business/taxes:
Her focus is on trust/estate planning, tax law, family law, setting up new businesses and filing tax returns. She is also in-house counsel for a corporation from our town and a local tax office. She is partnered with the tax office and has been working there for over 10 years, so they have become almost a second family to us, and has been building a "client list" since she began law school that having been filtering in. She rents a small office from from the tax office and they share front office staff/software which allows her overhead to remain low. They also both refer clients back and forth. During tax season, my wife helps by compiling and filling tax returns that come into the tax office. They are also in talks of doing a "profit sharing" from the tax office due to the increase in profits her partner saw last year.
For child care, our plan is for her to work from home with our daughter as much as possible. She is able to take her into work with her and regularly does. If she has a meeting, someone from the office will watch over our daughter while she has her meetings. They also have a dedicated "child space room" from when the tax office owner's children were younger that will be used as our daughter gets older.
My mother-in-law also keeps her for 2 mornings during the week so that my wife can go in for meetings/work in order to have more focused time. She has been talking about decreasing her own work in order to have her an additional full day as well.
Due to way my vacation accrues (per pay period) and the amount of vacation I receive (4+ weeks), I have been able to basically drop down to 4 days per week in order to spend more time with our daughter and so my wife can go into work. I typically work 1 full week per month to maintain 10+ vacation days incase I would need to take an extended time off. I also am able to use sick time for all doctors appointments and use those full days off so my wife can go into work.
She will also go into work on some weekends (usually 1/2 days) if she needs to catch up and will work during the evenings while I play with our daughter/after she goes to sleep.
With all these options, we feel that she can grow well enough for the first few years, while still having lots of time for our daughter, and when she turns 2 or 3, we would look into enrolling her in a pre-school program at our local church, or with one of the child care businesses she works for at a discounted rate.
On her income/taxes:
I should clarify that what I listed is what she was able to transfer into our personal account, not her gross amount. She keeps a certain balance in her business account for expenses and taxes. Her and her partner have discussed how she should plan her taxes, but I am just not 100% on the details. This is something we have been discussing in hopes of getting a better balance in order and to pay off our debts.
On some of our expenses:
Gas- this is one area that should be coming down. $150 was our budget last year and we came in under. I've been slowly trying to reduce my ridiculous commute. I was commuting 35 miles/60 minutes each way 3+ days a week early last year. I have now gotten established at a much closer location and my commute now is only about 15 miles/20 minutes each way. I have also switched to a more fuel efficient car that will hopefully lower the cost as well. My wife also drives less now that our daughter has been born and she has been working from home more.
Insurance - We are going to shop around for our insurance and drop to liability on my car only, since we carry more than enough in our e-fund if this one was totaled.
E-Fund - We are going to keep 15k in the efund and then use the other 20k to pay of the credit card, car, and then use the little remaining on student loans. I was just given access to a saving account from middle/high school that my dad put money from jobs/work during that time period for me. I just need to close that account and transfer the money into our personal account.
Are you actually tracking expenses? There are an awful lot of rounded figures here that suggest that these are more hopeful wishlist items than an honest reflection of your spending. Because really, if you were consistently spending $3400/mo. while bringing home over $6K net, you wouldn't have CC debt, and you wouldn't need to have financed a lawnmower, right? It sounds to me like you have jumped into a lot of expensive stuff over the past couple of years -- kid, wife's new firm, house, etc. -- and are just now sitting down to come to grips with what all of that means. So order of priorities:
1. Track your expenses. You have a lot of moving parts and are chasing a bunch of different stuff. You need to know what you're working with. Your wife also needs to track her income and business expenses separately -- as others have suggested, I would not assume her business grows this year if she is taking care of a baby/toddler without paid help, and she needs to document business expenses so you can take the appropriate tax deductions.
I have been tracking our expenses for a couple years, even before discovering MMM or any financial websites mostly for observation so that I would know of any patterns we developed. These numbers are from our 2018 spending, in what was our most expensive year yet. A big part of our cc debt was due to starting up her business before she was able to start practicing.