Okay, so you have lots of debt and the creditors are hounding you. How do you handle it and get debt relief before you have a nervous breakdown? Use a simple tool called Dateline Paying.
Dateline paying is a simple method of paying oldest bills first, based on the due date. The dateline tells you how far back in time the dates of your past due bills go. Yes, credit card debt should be treated exactly like a regular past due bill. Here are a few basic steps to use this method that anyone can do.
1 - List out all your past due bills and credit card debt. Use a report from your accounting program or a spreadsheet of some kind 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.
Make the credit card bill for the amount you want to try to pay over the few weeks before the payment is actually due. For example, put a bill in for $600 if your minimum payment due is $400.
2 - At the end of your business week, carve off 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 phone lines ringing to make more money.
Be sure and use some of the 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 - Utilize the 15% to pay the debt by dateline - oldest bills first. Make sure to use part of it to pay credit debt and part to pay suppliers.
4 - Pay a bit against credit card debt every week using on-line paying.
Why? Because it stops the daily interest compounding for the rest of the month on that amount you paid. This can save you a lot of interest charges over the long haul. It also saves you from getting hit with late charges for making late payments. Additionally, it eliminates the mad scramble to find enough cash to pay the credit debt in the week the statement says the payment is due.
5 - Pay past due bills from suppliers - oldest bill first. The one exception is a supplier who refuses to ship more product that you need to produce more income, or one who is threatening legal action. Those are dangerous situations that must be handled immediately.
6 - Work out how to increase your income in order to have an increasing amount of money to utilize 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 closer to present time till you are current on your bills and out of debt.
You can easily see this dateline paying strategy working for you if you make a graph of the total debt you owe and plot the figure each week so you can see the amount of debt coming down. It helps you confront the debt you created, it acknowledges the actions you are taking to get that situation handled.
Article Source: http://www.orbitaloc.com/
Sandra Simmons, President of Money Management Solutions has years of experience helping business owners and individuals manage their money to achieve financial freedom. Claim your FREE REPORT "7 Fatal Money Management Mistakes Business Owners Make"
Please Rate The Above Article From The Small Business Category
Article Title: Get Debt Relief By Using Dateline Paying
Not yet Rated
Syndicate Small Business Related Articles Via RSS!
Subject to Orbitaloc.com's Publisher Terms of Service, you may reprint this
article on your own website, blog, and ezine. (English only) You may also syndicate
the article via Really Simple Syndication (RSS). It is free of charge.
Free Articles on Small Business and Other FREE Content Article Topics
The preceeding is an informative article from the Small Business category.
