<prompt> Human: My wife recently passed away. She had employer paid life insurance that will pay out 40k. Her funeral costs were approximately 7k jesus its expensive to rent a casket which means Ill get about 33k. All of her credit card debt is being written off, as well as her student loans and her car they were all in her name only which means Im only responsible for what was mine alone. She was helpful in racking up quite a bit of credit card debt. Heres the breakdown: Amex : -801.45 Wells Fargo : -1,174.72 Citi : -2,764.48 Personal Loan : -4,412.29 Bank of America : -6,400.00 Lowes : -6,433.52 Discover : -17,649.92 I have no 401k to speak of I cashed out previously to pay off some of our debt. It didnt happen unfortunately but Ive started contributing to one again meeting the company match.I make approximately 90kyr after all monthly bills I should have about 1600mo unaccounted for - that includes mortgage, utilities, vehicle gas, etc. I have about 1k in savings right now that Im trying to build back up. My question to you: Since Im mostly starting over, what order should I do this in? Should I punch up my savings to a few thousand, and then use whats left to pay off as much of the credit debt as I can? Discover and Lowes have the highest monthly payments 388mo and 200mo respectively.  <response>: Sorry for your loss. I would save 2-3k as an emergency fund, but then knock out as much of the debt as possibly, from highest interest to lowest interest. Youll still have about 10k of debt left, so you should take your 1600 extra PLUS whatever payments you freed up and pay off the rest in 5 months. 