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[quote=Anonymous]With that amount of outstanding debt, you are definitely living above your means.  You need to get a handle on your expenses immediately.  What you need to do is look at your take-home salary every month.  Then look at the inflexible debts, such as mortgage/rent, utilities, minimal for food, any expenses that you have committed go and cannot get out of (say a cable contract).  Look at what remains.  You need to set up a budget each month that has you paying down a significant amount on the CC debt.  You need to cut out any extras that are not necessities:  cable (watch shows on-line with Hulu, etc), cut your cell phone service down to basic service, Starbucks, dry cleaning except absolutely necessary (say if your work requires a certain dress level), eating out.  Learn to combine errands so that you save money by using less gas.  If you have housecleaning, shift from every 2 weeks to once/month or less.  Look for ways to cut back.

One of the first things I would suggest that you do is go and get a used car and sell your current car.  There is absolutely no reason with $18K in outstanding debt that you should have a car loan of $13K unless you bought in one of those no-money down offers.  Having over $30K of debt is way too much to be holding if you don't have a plan on how to pay down those debts.

Second, as someone else pointed out, you need to put the CC's in a locked drawer somewhere and really only use them for emergencies.  Emergencies like "the power is going to be shut off tomorrow", "the water heater is going to die in the next few weeks", etc.  Other than that, only cash until you get a handle on these debts.   Then, line up all of the credit card accounts.  If any of them are currently charging you interest, then you need to pay those off, with the highest one first.  You should be paying the maximum amount that you can scramble up each month and it needs to be enough to cover the interest and pay down towards the principal debt.  Ideally, you should be able to plan that this first debt should be paid off within the year.  Then the next highest.  After you cover the ones that charge you interest, look at the zero interest debts and pay off the ones that the zero interest period expires soonest.

You are on your way to very dangerous financial circumstances if you don't get a handle on this now.  These problems tend to snowball.[/quote]

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