What do you do when....

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-15-2009
What do you do when....
2
Tue, 02-17-2009 - 9:12pm

What do you folks do when you start feeling panicky about all the debt? This usually happens to me in the middle of the night and I wake up out of a restless sleep panicked that we are going to lose the house, the car, I don't know how we are going to pay a particular bill, etc.

Also, how do you decide what to pay when your income really does not cover all the bills. We have trimmed and trimmed, (could probably trim a bit more), but every month I am deciding which bills to pay on time, which ones to pay late, or which ones to pay at all. A couple of you mentioned to me from last post that I should have a plan...what kind of plan do you suggest when the income doesn't cover the expenses?

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-17-2007
Tue, 02-17-2009 - 10:34pm

I am sorry to say that if that is the case with your family. I mean going in the hole each month something has to give one way or the other. Someone in the family has to bring in more income or you have to cut more from expenses. Because until you get to 0 at the end of the month you will never get ahead.


At some point if you want fresh eyes to look at what you are spending you can put your numbers in a postings We all have done that from time

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2003
Wed, 02-18-2009 - 1:20am

We've been there - at the point where each month, one bill would have to be late. And yeah, it was stressful for both of us, although my husband expressed it differently. We're lucky that he finally has a good job.

A couple of things we did to make it easier:

we cut back on our food/eating out budget. we basically stopped eating out, and a couple of times a week we made extra of whatever we were eating for dinner so that it could be taken for lunches. Dh took over grocery shopping and was just super careful to only buy things like meat when they were on sale.

I collected points from things like mypoints and airmiles. mypoints I got by clicking on emails and filling out surveys, and airmiles we get when we get gas or groceries. Eventually I trade in the points for gift cards, and we use these to splurge. (Although you can get gift cards to gas stations, etc)

We made a list each month with all of the bills in order of when we would pay them. If a bill didn't get paid one month, it would be at the top of the list the next month.

I increased my income by writing reviews on reviewstream and tried writing online articles and various things. This actually worked well enough that I paid a little bill each month with the extra money.

Basically we sat down one day and brainstormed a list of ways to make/save $5 extra. Then we each had to try to do 5 of them. (Dh once chose to bike to work for a week). It's kind of fun.