Allright, you are in debt and your creditors are hounding you. How do you handle it and get debt relief without having a nervous breakdown? Use a simple tool called Dateline Paying.

Dateline paying is a simple way to pay oldest bills first, by using the due date. The dateline tells you how far back in time your past due bills go. Yes, credit debt should be treated just like a regular past due bill. Here are a few simple steps to use this method that you can do.

1 - List out all your past due bills and credit card debt. Use a spreadsheet or a report from your accounting program so you can sort them in order of due date. Make sure you include a bill for more than the minimum payment for each credit card.

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 close of your business week, carve off 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 85% to promote your company's products so customers keep buying, and set a bit aside as a cushion to handle emergencies.

3 - Use the 15% to chip away at the debt dateline - oldest bills first. Make sure to use a portion of the cash 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 for the rest of the month on that amount you paid. This saves you many dollars in unnecessary interest charges over the long haul. This tactic also keeps you from being late on your payments and avoiding the late payment charges. In addition, it stops the scrambling to find enough cash to pay the credit debt in the week the payment is actually due.

5 - Pay suppliers' past due bills - 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. These are dangerous situations that must be handled immediately.

6 - Figure out how to raise your income in order to have an increasing amount of money to use to work this strategy of dateline paying.

Systematically working at paying 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 watch this strategy of dateline paying working for you by making a graph of the total amount of your debt and plot the figure each week so you can see the total of the 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.