Followup to unexpected medical bills

On September 7 I revealed a few medical bills that were put on our credit card. We had some hard decisions to make, and my wife and I had different strategies for tackling this new debt.

Obviously we were not going to carry a credit card balance, it had to be paid off. This left us with 3 options: tighten our belts and attack it as best we could, use a portion of our emergency fund and then repay ourselves back slowly, or use a portion of our debt repayment to pay it out. Her idea was to use the debt repayment (as that is what it is technically for) and I wanted to use the emergency fund, seeing this as an emergency.

Our compromise was to pay as much as we could during the month and see what was left over at the end, then use the debt repayment amount to pay it. Here we are at ground zero and it stands as thus: out of the $1,700 card balance we have paid off all but $400 just by saving a little extra and putting whatever we can into it (and some generous help). It's been tight. But now out of our debt repayment (what we pay extra towards the principles of our debt) we need only use $400, still allowing us to put $900 towards other debt. In the end, I think we both feel pretty good about this result.