<prompt> Human: My husband and I are trying to come up with a short-term and a long-term financial plan. We currently have about 11k in our savings account. We have about that much in credit card debt. His credit is pretty good, and mine is pretty much shit. My goal for 2017 is to pay off all my personal credit card debt about 5k in addition to the 11k we have jointly. My question is basically do we empty our savings to pay as much of our debt off, or do we continue to live paycheck-to-paycheck trying to pay more than the minimums? Our savings isnt growing because all of our money is being eaten by credit cards.  <response>: I would pay off all but 3-4K of the credit card debt and then attach the remaining balance over the next few months. Always nice to have some cash on hand as you cant use your cards for everything. If an emergency does come up you can always put it back on the cards or you have a small cash reserve. 