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Okay, so you have lots of debt and your creditors are screaming. 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, by using the due date. The dateline tells you how far back in time your past due bills go. Yes, credit card debt should be treated exactly 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 so you can sort them by due date. Make sure you include 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, earmark 15% of the income and use this to pay down past due bills and debt. Use the remaining 85% to pay current bills to keep the doors open, the lights on and the telephone ringing to get in more income.

It is important that you use some of the remaining 85% to promote your company's products so customers keep buying, and set a bit aside 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 part of it to pay suppliers and part to pay credit card debt.

4 - Pay a bit against credit card debt each week by paying on-line.

Why? Because you stop the daily interest compounding on the amount that you paid. This can save you many dollars in unnecessary interest charges over the long haul. It also saves you from getting hit with late charges for making late payments. In addition, it stops the scrambling to come up with a big chunk of 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 have to be handled immediately.

6 - Figure out how to increase your income so that you have a growing amount of money to utilize to work this strategy of dateline paying.

Systematically working to pay both ends of the dateline, 85% to current operating expenses and 15% to past due bills, gradually moves the dateline forward to present time until 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 debt you owe and update the number each week so you can see the amount of debt coming down. Not only does it help you confront the debt you created, it validates the effort you are putting into getting the situation handled for good.

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"