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Allright, you are in debt and the creditors are hounding you. 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 your past due bills go. And yes, credit debt should be treated exactly like a regular past due bill. There are a few simple steps to this strategy that you can do.

1 - List out credit card debt and past due bills. Use a spreadsheet or a report from your accounting program so you can sort them by 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, put a bill in for $600 if your minimum payment due is $400.

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. This leaves you 85% to pay current bills to keep the doors open, the lights on and the phone lines ringing to make more money.

It is important that you use part of the remaining 85% to promote your company's products to keep customers buying, and stash away a bit as a cushion to handle emergencies.

3 - Use the 15% to pay the debt by dateline - oldest bills first. Make sure to use a portion of the money to pay suppliers and part to pay credit card debt.

4 - Pay something towards credit card debt every week using on-line paying.

Why? Because it stops the daily interest compounding on the amount that you paid. This saves you many dollars in interest charges over time. This tactic also saves you from getting hit with late charges for making late payments. In addition, it stops the mad scramble to come up with a big chunk of cash to pay the credit debt in the week the statement says the payment is due.

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

6 - Work out how to raise your income so that you have a growing amount of money to use to work this dateline paying strategy.

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 easily see this dateline paying strategy working for you if you make a graph of the total amount of your debt and plot the number each week so you can observe the total of the debt coming down. It helps 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. Claim your FREE REPORT "7 Fatal Money Management Mistakes Business Owners Make"