Journey through tough financial times

My current focus is a huge credit card debt.  This had an element of spending too much over time catching up to you, but mostly it was our roof, hot water heater/supporting plumbing, entire air conditioning system, and grandmother's 90th birthday out of state trip for the family all coming in the same year.  So now we have debt I would have done just about anything to avoid.  Anything besides put my wife through a Dallas summer with no AC, skip my grandmother's 90th birthday, etc.

To be honest, there's a part of me that is glad to be forced to confront our finances with a "can we survive" mentality, vs. just getting comfortable looking at a budget that says we spent a tiny bit more than we made this month (It was unavoidable, it was a one time thing this month!).  It's never a one time thing, there's one time expenses every month.

So now I'm looking through the house with the lens of "What would that yield on eBay?"  We don't keep an enormous amount of stuff in our small house, but I'm finding some forgotten "treasures".  I don't need two flashes for the camera we only use on occasion.  I don't need the xbox, now that I spend every free moment of gaming (few that exist) on PC, playing through a backlog of Steam sales finds that will last me for the next 5 years.  So on and so forth.

I've realized I'm an optimizer.  I want to extract the maximum possible value from the things I have, and spend money on.  I get incredible value from my $7.99 Netflix subscription, my $30.00 or less cell phone subscription, and my $2.99 skype subscription.  But what about my car insurance?  What about my alcohol monthly budget?  Groceries?

Now that my focus is drawn with forceful necessity to eliminating all unnecessary expenses, while seeking any possible source of additional income, I'm able to see more clearly what I'm getting out of what I spend.  For what it's worth, I also want to share what I have found, and continue to find, as viable options for optimizing a relatively conservative income, in Dallas, TX, admittedly one of the more affluent cities in America.  Join me in my journey of discovery, and feel free to offer advice or criticism.