<human>: Can you give me the gist of the text in a nutshell?

My wife used to make decent money and had good benefits, but she lost her job about two years ago. We tried to open a business for her and blew through her retirement.

I've been self employed since I was 16. I really hit my stride in the last few years. When my wife had her business, my business suffered as I was helping her. When we closed the doors on her store it freed up a lot of time and money and I was able to make some smart investments and do some marketing that has really paid off.

I will gross over 100K this year in a service business with relatively low overhead. The net on that 100K will likely be >$80K.

I am in a position to reinvest and grow my business, but we also realize we need long term savings.

We have a lot of debt. $30K~ in unsecured loans and credit cards, $30K~ in automobile debt, $90K~ home loan at 6% (in year 8 of 30).

We have no savings to speak of but I do have a $600,000 whole life policy. 

We both have pretty poor credit. Despite the fact the we always made decent money until my wife lost her job, we were really bad with money. On the plus side we really don't use credit at all.

We're currently saving 10% of our gross income, a practice which literally started Jan 1 as a New Year's resolution.

What steps can we take to move toward financial stability? How much money do we need on-hand to start a given investment and how much/often should we contribute more to that investment?
<bot>: We got hit hard by the economic downturn but we're back on our feet. How do we make sure we stay that way?