Okay, so you are in debt and the creditors are hounding you. How do you handle it and get debt relief without having a nervous breakdown? Use this simple guide for Dateline Paying.

Dateline paying is a simple way to pay oldest bills first, by using the due date. The dateline shows you how far back in time your past due bills go. Yes, credit debt should be treated just like any other past due bill. Here are a few simple steps to use this method that anyone can do.

1 - List out credit card debt and past due bills. Use a report from your accounting program or a spreadsheet of some kind and sort them in order of due date. Be sure and put in a bill for each credit card or line of credit that is more than the minimum payment.

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 close of each business week, carve off 15% of the income to use to pay past due bills and debt. Use the remaining 85% to pay current operating expenses to keep the front door open, the lights on and the phone lines ringing to get in more income.

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

3 - Utilize the 15% to chip away at the debt dateline - oldest bills first. Make sure to use a portion of it to pay suppliers and part to pay credit card debt.

4 - Pay a bit against credit card debt every week using on-line paying.

What for? Because it stops the daily interest compounding on the amount that you paid. This saves you a lot of interest charges over time. This tactic also saves you from getting hit with late charges for making late payments. Additionally, it eliminates the scrambling to come up with a big chunk of cash to pay the credit debt in the week the payment is actually due.

5 - Pay past due bills from suppliers - oldest bill first. The only 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 increase your income so that you have an increasing amount of money to utilize to work this dateline paying strategy.

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

You can easily see this strategy of dateline paying working for you by making a graph of the total debt you owe 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 validates the actions you are taking to get that situation handled.

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"