I am drowning
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I am drowning
| Fri, 03-25-2005 - 2:47pm |
I am a stay at home mom to a 7 year old and a 20 month old. We are sitting on 37K worth of credit card debt. I dont know what to do. I am so sick about this. I dont know what we're going to do. Filing for bancruptcy is not an option. We need help.

Hello and welcome to the board.
All my best,
Danni
Does your husband know about all of the debt, and is on willing to work with you to cut back on household expenses? That's a great first step to think about. :-D
Keep posting and keep reading...there's lots of good ideas here. :-D
Pat
Welcome. Isn't it scary when you wake up to the reality that is your debt? I know it was for me. But you're taking a good first step at realizing that you have a problem and are no longer going to deny it, only then can you begin to set up a plan of attack. Danni is right - the use of the cc's has got to stop if you're ever going to make any kind of progress. The previous poster asked if your dh was aware of the situation, and I was wondering as well, if not I think a good initial setp might be coming clean. After that you really need to sit down and make a list of every debt that needs to be paid down with balances and what the rates are. Once you have the scary total of what you need to work at paying down you need to hammer out a plan to do just that. Not every solution will work for you, you just have to find the one that will work best for your family - whether it be to snowballing the debt, or finding a part time job, cutting down to bare necessities, or like in my case with my dh even selling our home. Only you know what will work best for you specific situation. But it's a good thing you've done to admit to your debt so now you can take the steps to get out.
It's not always easy, but I've found that even working at our debt and having goals for not only how we plan on getting out of debt but plans for future money management has totally improved my outlook on things. I'm much less stressed about our debt because now I know we have a plan for what to do as before when we didn't it was taking such a toll on my physically and emotionally.
Good luck with your initial progress :)