After seeing your new mint data, I agree with people above to not be so hard on yourself, you are at nearly 70% savings (above if you count principal of your mortgage and student loans). That is an incredible accomplishment and will swiftly bring you to debt freedom.
I consider my October spending to be the "baseline" -- in other words, the amount I spend
before I start really trying to be frugal. (Remember, I had been spending similar monthly amounts for several years now; the only difference is that it was more than my income 8 months ago!) I still want suggestions on how to cut expenses!
For your debt, 6.55% is still pretty high and is a gauranteed return when you pay it, unlike the market. Take into account your tax situation when determining how quick you should pay down student loans and the mortgage, which may lower your actual APR enough to make it worth investing instead. Also, 17 months seems far away but it will sneak up on you and the last thing you want is to get hit with a huge amount of back interest on those two other credit cards.
After you get anything high interest (I would probably call that anything 5.5-6% plus) then you can start putting more in an IRA. Right now it looks like your top tax bracket is probably 15% after deductions so a Roth is probably a better choice for you.
The plan for the 0% cards is to make minimum payments in November (because I'm paying the 9% and 8.75% debts completely off), then divide the balances by however many 0% months are left and make equal payments.
Taxes are something I need help with, especially because our income streams weren't consistent through the year (I had 9 months of W-2 salary and my wife had 9 months of unemployment and 3 months of 1099 independent contractor income
with no taxes taken out). I've never been good at figuring out the relationship between withholding, quarterly 1099 payments and liability/refunds, let alone the implications for IRAs. I've done done taxes by hand at the end of the year, but I don't really understand how to estimate and plan ahead of time.
How bad is your fixer upper? You should be putting more sweat than money into any renovations you have to do, so you can even start some of those projects now. Unless you have repairs that require a professional (and are not just "updates" that you want) then try to fit it in where you can. Better to spend some money now than a lot of money later to fix a bigger problem.
[The house deserves its own topic in the DIY forum, but here's a summary:]
You know that "hedonic adaption" that gets mentioned here occasionally? That works both ways...
The house was built in the 40s but renovated/doubled in size in 2001, cheaply. It's in decent structural condition, although some of the window frames are rotten (temporarily patched with butyl flashing). The fixtures in the master bath are all broken (and it never had a shower to begin with), so we use the hall bath (which is very small: it even has a 2' wide door). The previous owner was running out of money when the kitchen was installed, so the cheap particle-board cabinets were installed haphazardly (part of them just have laminate remnants sitting on them instead of a proper countertop and aren't even attached to the wall). All other finishes are builder-grade (cheap carpet with stains, fiberglass shower enclosures, $99 home-depot bathroom vanities, $100 flimsy gas range, etc.). Half the house has an unfinished basement under it, but there aren't any stairs so you have to walk around outside. The yard is graded improperly such that water flows into the basement (from the basement door, not through the foundation wall) when it rains heavily.
So far, we've only done things that could be accomplished without much material cost: we've painted and re-hung the kitchen cabinets (which helped some, but it still sucks). Plans for the future include:
- Re-grade the yard and re-pour the driveway such that we can knock out a basement wall and turn it into a 2-car garage (no idea on cost)
- Gut-rehab the master bath (estimated $5k budget)
- Gut-rehab the kitchen and hall bath (which is adjacent), including [re]moving walls (estimated $10-$15k, not including structural work)
- Add a stairway to access the basement from inside the house (no idea on cost)
- Replace rotten windows and expand glazed area for more natural light (no idea on cost)
- Add a deck or patio to back yard (no idea on cost, because I haven't decided on how big it will be yet)
- Replace the worn out, stained carpet and cheap laminate with either bamboo or hardwood floors
You are young and still have a ton of time to finish up your short term goals, try not to be hard on yourself for the past (especially since I would hardly call them mistakes anyway).
The only thing I consider to be a mistake is not "settling" for a computer programming job, which would have not only been almost as fun and much easier to find, but apparently (if MMM is any example) a much more lucrative career than civil engineering. (I had been expecting a $60k starting salary in either field, but my civil engineering job started at only $40k.)