2011 Clearing my head

Oh Man!!!
It's the start of the year again and the Tax man is waiting for his cut at the end of the month and once again I am using my January pay checks to clear it, not the worse part even. While on my second holiday to NZ last year (yes that is correct - second) I have clocked up debt on my credit card and my flexiloan. So now is the time to get rid of both.
An emergency situation with my god kids has meant that I have added to the trip debt on my card. Not what I had planned but as they are my god kids I do feel I had to do what I could.
So back to clearing debt, something I have to deal with every time I come home from a holiday.
My flexiloan is up to £2,500 and my card is at about £3,700 not including my tax bill which is just over £2.5k.
The Tax I will clear by the end of January - no problem and then it is just working on snowballing the card and loan, something I am aways doing. I am back to my £5 a day budget and will start up going to the gym (yep put a few pounds back on will away too).
As VAT was raised to 20% from yesterday I am sure the gym has changed it's prices, so will need to check what it is now. My coffee is 10p more than it used to be and that has got to be more than 20%. Thank goodness the gym is a monthly pay deal that you can stop at any time, should my job end and I need to move on.
Closing both my flexiloan and credit card are going to be quite hard to be honest. That is where the emergency funds account comes into being I guess. Does that mean I need to have about £5K+ in an emergency account to feel financially safe? Weird when you really think about it, will I be different about it if it was my own money and not borrowed from a bank? Lets hope so!!
Goals 1. to clear my debt 2. save emergency fund of £5000 3. savings over and above this amount to fund house building fund.
So that is all settled - see easy - what made it seem so hard to sort it all out.