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Okay, so you have lots of debt and your creditors are screaming. How do you cope with 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 shows you how far back in time the dates of your past due bills go. And 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 - Make a list of 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. 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, if your minimum payment is running at $400, put a bill in for $600.

2 - At the close of each 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 staff in place and the phone lines ringing to get in more income.

It is important that you use part of the 85% for promoting your company's products to keep customers buying, and set a bit aside as an emergency fund so you have a cushion to fall back on.

3 - Use the 15% to chip away at the debt dateline - oldest bills first. Always use a portion of the cash to pay credit debt and part to pay suppliers.

4 - Pay a bit towards 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 a lot of unnecessary interest charges over time. This tactic also keeps you from being late on your payments and avoiding the late payment charges. In addition, it eliminates the mad scramble 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 raise your income so that you have a growing amount of money to utilize to work this dateline paying strategy.

Methodically working to pay both ends of the dateline, 85% to current operating expenses and 15% to past due bills, gradually moves the dateline closer 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 if you make a graph of the total amount of your debt and update the number each week so you can observe 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.