There's a number of things going on here that are holding you back.
Your goals are well defined and definitely deserve attention, but unless you get some spending under control, you can't even being to tackle #1: Debt Paydown.
From the top down:
An Xbox One is not in your budget. Neither is $120 in video games. I love video games as much as the next gamer, and spend whole days grinding away in Minecraft or harvesting flowers and butterflies in Skyrim. They're great. However, I would recommend cutting his. Completely. Not only are you going to pay twice again for the machine while
leasing it (bad idea), you're also going to be looking at games for the Xbox One - shiny new games that cost $60 and then another $40-60 in DLC and maybe even an Xbox Live subscription fee. I would recommend taking the XKCD approach to this expense:
http://xkcd.com/606/Also skim this thread:
http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/a-mustachian-gamer/Savings: $456.60 + (
$120/mo * 10 months of your remaining console lease or
$1200 what) + ??? in DLC and other goodies =
at least $1656.60 SavedMotivation idea: Save this money toward a nice $1000 gaming PC - It will play all the same games as an Xbox and you can still use a controller. You can take advantage of Steam sales, borrow games from friends, play extremely cheap games like Minecraft or free games like Hearthstone, or MMOs with excellent replayability, like LoL. It'll also last longer, and you won't be trapped into having to buy a new $600 console every 3-5 years. Just upgrade to a newer but used video card every 3-5 years instead.
Whew, now that we averted that money sink, let's move on to..
The husband's phone - and maybe yours too, but it seems pretty reasonable for now - I don't see any reason why someone would need 10gb of data, but I also don't ride the bus multiple hours a day and watch Youtube videos the entire time, which could be the habit, or something like it, that is pushing his data usage so high. Giving up the data is the only thing that is going to cut this back. All I can tell you is that if your DH would be willing to read a book on the bus instead of watching Super Smash Brothers trailers while
paying $1176 per year for this luxury, you could be paying
$300 a year (5gb 3g, unlimited 2g, Republic Wireless), and
saving $876. Republic Wireless is just an example here - Ting and other services have competitive pricing and different features. Do some research.
About groceries and shopping in more affluent areas - I live in a little poorish corner of my town, and I also work in a more richish part of my town. I shop exclusively at King Soopers, and I buy all the same staples each trip. Now, we have the same store, the same shopping list, and two different areas of town. One would think that there wouldn't be any difference, but there is. I stopped shopping at the slightly more convenient and close to work store. It was, on average,
10% more expensive because it was placed in an affluent area. I would worry that this could be the case with your groceries as well. As weird as it sounds, shopping closer to your neighborhood might save you money on this bill, not to mention transport fees.
Savings on groceries: $35/mo or $420/year, not including possible transportation savings.
if you're spending $350/mo on groceries, and ALSO spending $350 on luxury premade meals (fast food through restaurants), something is wrong. If you were only spending $350 on all food, that would be OK, but as it stands, you're spending
$700/mo on eating, or
$8400 a year. As far as being hungry when you're out and about, carry snacks. Think of it like that thing your parents said you had to do anyways, even if you didn't want to. Like, homework. You don't want to do homework for school, but you do, because you know it's good for you in the end.
This is the same - you might not want to haul cliff bars or PB&J sammiches around with you, but you should. Because it's good for you.
Set an eating out budget of, say, $50 a month, which would be 2-3 fast food meals together where you share fries and a drink, or one nice dinner date per month.
Savings on eating out: $300/mo or $3600/yr, otherwise known as more than a whole month of your current income.
Total Saved over an entire year with these changes: $1656.60 (Games) + $876 (DH's phone) + $420 (Groceries) + $3600 (Eating out) =
$6553.60Total surplus income per year after these changes: $6553.60 + $2400 (current surplus) =
$8953.60Now, we can talk about debts... Assuming no change in income or expenses:
The total owed for DH's loans,
$22382.89, divided by your new yearly savings of
$8953.60 is 2.499 - or approximately
2.5 - 3 years to pay off his student loan debts.
The total owed on your loans,
$50,398.40, divided by your new yearly savings of
$8953.60 is 5.628 - or approximately
5.5 - 6.5 years to pay off your student loan debts.
Where your credit rating is concerned, I would recommend paying off your credit card completely. Continue to use it monthly to autopay bills, but continue to pay it off in full each month. This, i in combination with paying down student loans will bring your credit rating up. In the 5-10 years it may take you to pay off debts, get raises, earn more money and build a down payment, you should have a pretty good credit rating and be able to easily get a good rate on a house or townhome (assuming that's your goal, since you want to raise your credit, and that's mostly why people do it...). Or, I mean, if houses aren't your thing, you'll be able to push your credit rating up to where you can get some sweet deals on credit cards.
Check out these forums:
http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Rebuilding-Your-Credit/bd-p/rebuildingcreditI think that's all I can help with. I'm not very familiar with commuting in your city, so I'm not able to offer tips here. I live in a basement room of crappy apartment tucked away in a mixed suburb of my own city, and sympathize greatly with living someplace extremely uncomfortable on the pretense of savings... Other than that housing is bonkers in NYC, so I don't really have any suggestions to offer here, but wish you the best of luck. Hopefully none of this advice comes across too harsh, and hopefully the numbers will persuade you more than anything. Other than these things, to me, it sounds like you really have your head on your shoulders and are working hard, and succeeding every day to overcome some bad cards. Great job at life, man! Keep up being conscious about your spending and your upward mobility, and you won't have trouble improving your quality of life. :)
EDIT: Mayday's post below this one alerted me to something I'd overlooked! Thanks, Mayday!
$8 Netflix + $8 Hulu + $8 Amazon =
$24/mo or $288/yr. This could easily be cut and then become your used games and Steam sale budget.
