<prompt> Human: Ok all,I graduated college in May and have a decent job, making 35K per year. This comes out to about 2,246 monthly. Im working on finding better employment but until then, would you please critique my budgetIts pretty tight, I know. The thing thats killing me is the high interest rate on the car payment. Yes, the credit card interest rates are astronomical bad credit, but I am going to throw all my available money at them until they disappear. Then, I will begin putting about 400 per month into savings.The gal and I are planning on getting engaged about a year from now and Im a little stressed about finances. I have 0 in savings and am having a little trouble building that amount up with the amount of money I makedebt payments. The Federal Student Loans SL havent kicked in yet, but will in January. I plan on killing the credit card debt before the student loans become due.Do you great folks of rPF have any advice? Im panicking!Thank you so much for all the great info here!  <response>: The thing thats killing you is not the high interest on the car payment. The thing thats killing you is the debt that is twice as much as your current income and the fact that 30 of your take home pay is going towards debt payments. You said youre panicking, which is a good thing because youve got a big mess to clean up. The good news is that you can do this.Youve got a few places to cut in your budget gym...netflix...donations. Im a big fan of giving and encourage people to donate, but my friend, youre not really in a position to do that at the moment.The Dave Ramseys financial advice to those in your situation would go like this:First, take the 300 per month you have as extra cash and build up a 1,000 emergency fund. This is a first step so youve got some cash set aside.Second, start throwing every dollar you can at your debts. The Ramsey approach says smallest to largest snowball approach so the Cap 1 Rewards goes first, then the Cap One, then the car. Make minimum payments on everything else while youre working on getting those smaller ones out of your life.Is there anyway you can sell the car and buy a beater? If you can get those CCs paid down and not have a car payment, youve freed up another 400.The other area to work on is on the income side. Your income will mostly likely be going up in the next few years. Use that extra earnings to pay more more to your debts. Also, find a 2nd job or pick up some odd jobs. Anything extra you can bring in will get you closer to having some breathing room. 