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Okay, so you have lots of debt and your creditors are hounding you. How do you handle it and get debt relief before you have a nervous breakdown? Use this simple guide for Dateline Paying.

Dateline paying is a simple method of paying oldest bills first, based on the due date. The dateline shows you how far back in time the dates of your past due bills go. Yes, credit card debt should be treated exactly like any other past due bill. Here are a few basic steps to use this method that you can do.

1 - Make a list of all your past due bills and credit card debt. Use a spreadsheet or a report from your accounting program so you can sort them in order of due date. Be sure and put in a bill for more than the minimum payment for each credit card.

Decide how much you want to try to pay on the credit card bill over the next few weeks before the statement due date. For example, put a bill in for $600 if your minimum payment due is $400.

2 - At the end of your business week, earmark 15% of the income to use to pay past due bills and debt. This leaves you 85% to pay current operating expenses to keep the doors open, the lights on and the telephone ringing to make more money.

Be sure and use some of the remaining 85% for promoting your products and services so customers keep buying, and stash away a bit as an emergency fund so you have a cushion to fall back on.

3 - Use the 15% to pay the debt by dateline - oldest bills first. Make sure to use a portion of the money to pay credit debt and part to pay suppliers.

4 - Pay something towards credit card debt every week using on-line paying.

Why? Because it stops the daily interest compounding on the amount that you paid. That alone can save you many dollars in interest charges over the long haul. It also saves you from getting hit with late charges for making late payments. Additionally, it eliminates the scrambling to find enough cash to pay the credit debt in the week the payment is actually due.

5 - Pay suppliers' past due bills - oldest bill first. The one exception is a supplier who is threatening legal action, or one who refuses to ship more product that you must have to make more income. Those are dangerous situations that have to be handled immediately.

6 - Work out how to raise your income in order to have an increasing amount of money to use to work this dateline paying strategy.

Methodically working to pay both ends of the dateline, 15% to past due bills and 85% to current operating expenses, gradually moves the dateline forward to present time till you are current on your bills and out of debt.

You can watch this strategy of dateline paying working for you if you make a graph of the total amount of your debt and update the figure each week so you can see the total of the debt coming down. It helps you confront the debt you created, it acknowledges the effort you are putting into getting the situation handled for good.