are you able to lock the card instead of closing it? you might be able to salvage the account and save your credit score from tanking since it's your oldest line. cc company could just deactivate the card they use and reissue a new one to you.

You can try to see about getting a debt consolidation loan. Here is a website showing ranges of rates and amounts you could potentially get. This can be good or bad depending on what you qualify for. Even if you're stuck at something like a 4 year term with 20% interest you'd pay $304.30 monthly, which is about the same as now. The difference is, it will be paid off in 4 years, whereas your current cards could take much longer. If you score and manage to land something like a 7 year term with 10%, you'd be paying $166 a month.

You can also look into balance transfer credit cards. These are promotional cards, with 0% interest for a limited time, usually around 1-2 years. This will help pay down your principal during this time, so it'll reduce your monthly minimums. The caveat with these are that they will likely have balance transfer fees around 3-5%. That means you'd be in debt $10300-$10500 if you transferred right now. Not great, but that's still better than the 20+% you're likely dealing with.

In general though, you should just get a full-time job in order to pay it back.

do you have any debts? If so, pay them off.

If not, congrats, you're on your way to building wealth! Check out the wiki for guides. There's also a massive flow chart to follow on the wiki: "Prime Directive: How to Handle $"

Do you have an emergency fund established already? If not, this is the time to start. If so, you can contribute to it to cover 6 months of expenses. This is also on that flowchart.

I would say you should look into getting a home in the future. You can start saving for a down-payment now.

I think you should offer to match up to X amount in debt payments that they make to bring their debt under control, but it has to go towards the debt. That'll help them while not letting your brother spend it all. If they don't put it towards the debt, which will be obvious if you can see the payments they make, then stop giving it to them.

at 2900 monthly income, you have 428 in monthly expenses, bringing your discretionary down to 2472. are you planning on keeping your chevy or trading it in?

If you're keeping it, you'll have to pay for insurance on both cars. There's usually a discount with car insurance companies when you have multiple cars, but it will still eat at your finances. If you're trading it in, or even doing a pick and pull thing, you'll be able to put that as a part of a down-payment on your Mazda, which will your reduce monthly minimum.

Mazdas are really fuel efficient cars, so I think you picked a good make and model especially since you have a bit of a commute. I'm not so sure about the year. You could shop around for a 2014 give or take and go for a less expensive car.

Is there a reason you and your mom aren't on the same phone plan? There's usually a family discount for adding another line to an existing account.

If you really really want a newer model, I think you need to save quite a bit to bring your monthly down to a manageable level. If you saved 10k, you'd have a 15k loan, at 5.4%. If it's a 60 month term, you're looking at 285.83 monthly.

I think talk to your husband about the house if you feel it should be equal. You can both come up with half the down-payment, just in different times, unless you match his contributions. But, what about the mortgage? will you split that equally too? Just something to think about

As for everything else, I think go travel than figure out whether you want to max out your contributions. You have a rental property too, which in about a decade or so will be paid off, if I ran the numbers right. Assuming you keep the same rent (which you could probably increase at that time) and pay (which will likely be more in that time), you'd be making an annual income of 114,200. At this point, if your husband's pay hasn't changed either and assuming it's around the 85k ballpark, you're making 57% of the money. You haven't told us his income, so you can run the numbers using that instead and see whether your percentage changes substantially or not.

Note that you will have to include property taxes and a small reserve for any maintenance required for your rental. I'm assuming the prop. tax is handled with your current mortgage, but I don't know where you live so I can't adjust your income for that.