I've been tinkering with my big-picture plan, and it looks like even if the payroll tax cut expires, we should only be about $583 per month short of accomplishing our (pretty aggressive, in my opinion) saving and debt-repayment goals in four years. In other words, it would take us another 13 months at my estimated pace. (However, if AS continues to pull in freelance editing jobs at $1000 a pop, she'd only need about 6 of them per year to make up the shortfall.)

The goals are:
- $20K EF
- $5K medical fund
- Debt-free except mortgages by end of 2015 (about $38,350 of student loan payments plus $11,194 more in tuition)
- $80K in a moving to England / house down payment fund

Before 5 years are up, I know we'll have some money freed up in the budget; diaper service $91 per month will dip down and then go away once both girls are potty-trained (2-3 years for the infant, but the toddler hopefully will be done in a couple months), and daycare reduced by a couple hundred a month when AA starts going to kindergarten. (I assume we'll still pay something for after-school care and possibly other school expenses.)

Additionally, we pay about $100 per month in interest on our student loans. If we focused on eliminating those first, that would free up that amount to go toward savings.

With those changes, we might be able to cut down on the time it takes to meet all our goals.

I'm still torn as to whether I should just tackle one or two goals at a time, or continue putting a bit of money to each until they're all accomplished. Some of the money can only be put to certain goals: The UK rental income would be expensive to bring over to our US account, so I would use that only for the EF and house/moving savings goals, not debt repayment or the medical fund. And I do need to make at least a $125 minimum principal payment to AS's student loan even if I decide not to focus on student loans first.

So, I'll continue to mull over it, and hopefully I'll make up my mind before the new year starts.