Okay, so you are in debt and your creditors are screaming. How do you handle it and get debt relief without having a nervous breakdown? The best practice is to use a simple debt relief solution 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 your past due bills go. And yes, credit card debt should be treated just like any other past due bill. There are a few simple steps to this strategy that anyone can do.

1 – Make a list of 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 by due date. Be sure and put in a bill for more than the minimum payment for each credit card or line of credit.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, if your minimum payment is running at $400, put a bill in for $600.2 – At the end 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 doors open, the lights on and the telephone ringing to get in more income. Be sure and use some of the 85% for promoting your products and services to keep customers buying, and set a bit aside as a cushion to handle emergencies.3 – Use the 15% to pay the debt by dateline – oldest bills first.Always use a portion of it to pay suppliers and part to pay credit card debt.

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

Why? Because you stop the daily interest compounding on the amount that you paid. This can save you a lot of money in unnecessary interest charges over time. It also keeps you from being late on your payments and avoiding the late payment charges. In addition, it eliminates the scrambling to come up with a big chunk of cash to pay the credit debt on the week the statement says the payment is due.

5 – Pay past due bills from suppliers – oldest bill first.

The only exception is a supplier who refuses to ship more product that you need in order 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 raise your income so that you have an increasing amount of money to use to work this debt relief solution strategy.

Systematically working at paying both ends of the dateline, 15% to past due bills and 85% to current operating expenses, gradually moves the dateline forward to present time until 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. Not only does it help 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. For more information, claim your FREE Debt Reduction Solutions Guide

© 2008 Sandra S. Simmons. All Rights Reserved.

Ever gotten that feeling of anger and despair when you thought of working out a budget? Then the odds are good you’ve never looked up the word in a good dictionary to find out what this word really means, and thought about how you can use that to your business’s financial advantage.

Want some really good News? Running your business on a budget does not entail cutting back on the quality of the things you buy or denying your company anything it needs to operate. What it does mean, is that you have to figure out how to make enough money to afford the items your company has to have and to keep your spending within the limits of your income.

There’s more good news! The most valuable asset you have is you and your staff, and your income earning potential. If you want more money to spend, then figure out ways you and your staff can be more productive to bring in more money.

Another definition you need know is this: a BUDGET is the amount of money required for the business to operate, and to attain its financial goals.

Let’s consider the first part of the definition; how much is needed for you and your company to run. Add up all the money you spent in the past year to see how much money went out the door including what you put on credit cards plus interest. Divide the total by 52 weeks, and multiply it by 1.136. The result is what your weekly budget is. That is the amount of income your business has to bring in just to function plus barely keep up with increases in the cost of doing business. That doesn’t include paying compund interest on credit card debt.

More than likely, you have financial goals you also want your company to attain; That’s the second part of the definition. Reaching those goals must get added to your budget as well.

Here is an example: a company owner wants to purchase new office furniture 6 months from now that costs $2,000. They divide the cost of the furniture by the 26 weeks they have before the target purchase date and learn they have to set aside $76.92 every week to have the cash for the furniture. This gets added to the budget, meaning the additional amount of income they have to put into the bank every week.

Most importantly, if you, the company owner, want to attain the goal of financial freedom – working because you WANT TO instead of because you HAVE TO — then the most important part of the budget needs to be the wealth building cash you set aside in a savings plan and never touch.

Figure out how much money you would have to have in savings to live without working. Divide that dollar amount by the number of weeks until the time you would like to be financially free. Figure out how to make that much more income each week, and your budget is on the correct path to achieving financial freedom.

How badly do you want to be a millionaire in 20 years? Figure out a way to increase the company’s income enough to stash away $961.54 a week in savings for the next 1,040 weeks and you have made it to being a millionaire! The additional interest earnings on top of that will be a a nice add on perk that more than keeps up with the rise in the cost of living every year.

Today, with computers in every organization proper budgeting is accomplished much more efficiently than ever before by using Money Management Software, such as shown in this video. This software can work as a companion to your accounting software for really easy day-to-day operation.

Sandra Simmons, President of Money Management Solutions, Inc. specializes in helping business owners and individuals manage their money to achieve financial freedom. Claim your FREE Debt Reduction Solutions Guide

© 2008 Sandra S. Simmons. All Rights Reserved.

Do you need some debt relief? You are not alone. Here are 5 tips on reducing debt that you can do right now.

1 – Knock Off Using Credit

The place to start is by locking away the credit cards and figuring out how to cut expenses back to function within your income. Figure out ways to increase your income and instead,use only cash. This is the single most effective action you can take.

2 – Never Commit to Spending More Than Your Company’s Income

When you pay for an item with credit because you don’t have the cash, you are committing your business’ future income to pay the credit company. That’s the recipe for economic slavery. Evaluate whether or not the item will increase the company’s production of income. If the item will increase the business’ production of income, work out how to set aside the cash to pay for it over a short time period instead of whipping out the credit card. Find ways to increase the company’s income and use it to pay both current expenses and pay off credit debt.

3 – Pay More Than The Minimum Payment That’s Required

An effective way to reduce the debt every week is to take 10% to 15% off the top of the company’s income and use it to pay down the debt. Set a goal to pay at least 3 to 5 times the minimum required payment on each credit card and line of credit. Set aside some of the payment money every week before the statements arrive in the mail. It is less difficult to set aside a smaller amount over 4 weeks than to try to come up with a big chunk in one week.

Your debt reduction program should also include the strategy of paying more on the highest interest rate card. Another strategy is paying off the lowest balance cards as fast as possible. This will free up more cash to pay against the higher interest rate cards.

4 – Never Pay Late or Spend Over Your Limit

Never sabotage your debt reduction program by getting hit with $25 to $39 over-the-limit or late fees plus the interest on those fees. Plus, if you pay over 30 days late, your credit record carries that big black mark against you for 7 years – a whopper of a penalty.

Recently a Vice President of a U.S. bank appearing on the news stated that over 24 Billion dollars was paid in interest, late fees and over-limit fees last year on credit cards. I hope you don’t think the credit company minds too much if you go over your spending limit or mail your payment late. They collected billions because of it.

5 – Find Ways To Cut Expenses

A requirement of a debt reduction program is more cash as fast as possible to pay the debt off. Examine where your business’ income is going and reduce all unnecessary expenses that do not contribute to making more money. Before you spend, work out how much money each and every purchase is going to return to your company.

TIP: Continue promoting your your company and its products to everyone – this is one area you don’t want to stop spending on. Just make sure you are getting a handsome financial return on the promotional investment.

Correctly managing the money in a business to make sure it survives takes more than a program to reduce debt, but this is a great place to start. There are other steps in my money management software program that can be taken to increase the business’ income, pay bills on time, have savings for emergencies, increase profitability and pay yourself a bigger paycheck. Who doesn’t want that, right?

Sandra Simmons, President of Money Management Solutions, has years of experience helping professionals and private individuals manage their income to eliminate debt. Claim your FREE Debt Reduction Solutions Guide

© 2007 Sandra S. Simmons. All Rights Reserved.

Buying with a credit card is an alluring trap invented by our modern financial system.

Buying something using a credit card is not bad, IF you have the income to pay the credit card balance in full when the statement arrives, plus all your other bills.

But buying with a credit card because you don’t actually have the money, is simply committing your future earnings to the credit company under the threat of a bad credit rating. That is financial slavery.

Credit card debt = financial slavery

Buying with a credit card

when you can’t pay

is financial slavery

Over the past few years, financial experts have helped a lot of people to get out of the credit card trap with debt reduction programs. Helping people do this is not looked on favorably by the credit companies; they lose all that profitable interest. They take counter measures to hook more people back in by offering 0% percent interest for some period of time.

Are they really giving you 0% interest? Only if you can pay off the debt before the time frame is up. What they are counting on is you NOT having the ability to pay it off.
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