Speaker: How should I prioritize my debt elimination process?
Linda Stroman: You want to look at the things that are most important. Certain things we need to keep going, keep in service. So for example when you’re looking at paying off your debt, you want to look at things like of course paying your rent a mortgage first because we do need a roof over head. That’s first and foremost and also keeping an assurance up along with that.

In addition to that, living in property, we need to have utilities so I like to guess our water, our phones, and the things like that. They are important to us and help us keep going from day to day.

Also things like clothing and things in all those line, we want to keep those things going but not in excess. We don’t need to go out and buy name brand type things but we want to make sure those things that covered and then the other expenses like credit cards and car notes, and things like that. We want to look at trying to pay down as much as possible.

One of the things with prioritizing all the debt elimination is that you have to communicate with your creditors. You have to talk to let them know what your situation is and of course, a good faith effort in saying I may not be to pay $200.00 a month so you’d like to pay $100.00 a month to try to keep things going. I really want to satisfy this debt until I can bring my income up whatever the situation might be.

So you want to communicate with your creditors at all times. The best time really to communicate is when you start to feel debt coming into play whether you accrue an excessive debt. And what you want to look at the things that you need to hold on to and make sure those things are paid first.