State of the debt November 1st

How I'm doing as of November 1st:

Total debt: $40,585

Bank of America $7,916
Amex Blue $2,103
Amex Gold $0
CareCredit $417
Chase PerfectCard $6,779
Chase Universal $5,545
Discover $4,205
Student loan debt $13,620

Total assets: $33,455

Savings (in various accounts) Basically nil
Traditional IRA $23,257
Roth IRA $1,387
401k $4,484
SEP-IRA $4,327

Net worth: -$7,130

In July my net worth was almost $2k higher, but I'm actually pretty pleased about this month's number anyway. Because:
1 - I sold my previous car and bought a new one worth about $1k more. I used savings to fix some things in the old car so I could get the best price for it, and to pay for the "upgrade" and fixing the new car's condenser.
2 - I also used savings to buy a business. Yes, I know I just sold the last one, but it looked like a good opportunity and the price was good. I will probably sell this business fairly soon, as I put a lot of time and money into upgrading it (new shopping cart system, affiliate program, etc) and will hopefully make about a thousand bucks on the deal. Not bad for a few months' work.
3 - I didn't know it at the time, but July was the high point for my investments' worth. The markets have been pretty bad and overall my investments went down about $2500. However, since I am aggressively paying down my debts (at the rate of about $1,000 a month) my debts going down outpaced my investments going down somewhat. So most of the loss of net worth is due to me spending my cash. I guess technically my car and the business are assets, but I don't like including them here since they are not particularly liquid. But, I will use some of the proceeds from selling the business to pay down debts, so it'll eventually show up on the balance sheet.

The one thing I'm not too pleased about is the fact that I have practically zero cash on hand. This makes me very nervous. I've started my Christmas shopping, and after spending $300 have presents for most of the people on my list. (I like to get started early, and make sure I have something at least halfway good for everybody, and then if I find something better later, either they get multiple presents or I put the less-good one in the present pile for anyone I forgot to buy something for.) I have a good chunk of change coming in this month from various projects, but none of it's here yet, and then I'll need to spend it on getting the car's heater fixed (go me, buying a car that neither heats nor cools!) and taking the dog to the vet. So here's hoping that nothing goes too wrong between now and whenever I manage to save up some money. I had set a goal of paying off my Amex cards by the end of the year, and I did pay off the Gold card, but have not made as much headway on the Blue card. Hopefully if I sell the business by the end of the year, and get cracking on other projects to make money, I'll still be able to meet that goal.

The other day I opined to Boyfriend about how much f&$!@# money I will have once I pay off my debt, given that I turn over essentially half of each paycheck to debt. I make a decent salary, so if I'm not paying $1k a month to someone else, we could go to Italy twice a year without any trouble. He regarded me balefully and said, "Yeah, but by then we'll have kids, so we still won't really have any money." Voice of optimism.