If you are currently wading knee deep in debt, then help is at hand. The 6 step Debt Buster plan is sane and easy advice to sort of your payments, get you back on track to staying in the black. The longer you are in debt, the worse it gets, so let’s get started right away.

1. Work out how much money you are spending on your outgoings. You need to be able to work out what is mandatory - bills and mortgage for example, or discretionary - food, going out, clothes etc. Cutting back on the discretionary payments will give you the most money that you can then use to pay back any debts. Add together all of your income. Take out all of the mandatory payments and this will leave you with your discretionary spend. You then need to go through your discretionary outgoings and decide what can or cannot be reduced or even stopped.

2. Take it from me now, you will need to make sacrifices to get this to work. There will always be something on your discretionary list that can be halved, saved on or cancelled all together. The less you pay out, the more you can pay towards clearing your debt. Sit down and think about each item properly. Can it be cancelled? A cheaper option found? Or does it need to be kept? If you can’t decide or you are not good at being objective, get someone to help you and be “the voice of reason”.

3. Now you know what you have and have not got, it’s time to take a look at all of your debts. Put them down on paper and find out which has the highest interest rate and then start to pay the highest one off first. Over the time it takes you to pay others, this one will add more and more debt to your balance. Get rid of it as soon as you can and you will be able to manage things a lot better.

4. As an alternative to the previous step, you could opt to pay off any small amounts of debt first which will leave you more room for paying the larger ones later. This is great for piece of mind and a good feeling knowing that you have got rid of at least some of your debts.

5. As you begin to clear your debts down, put some thought into combining that payments you made on those debts towards paying off the next one. So if you just finished paying a small loan, put that payment together with the next payment you are going to make to pay off larger amounts. As you do this each time, paying off the larger debts as you go on will become easier.

6. Be strong! Another key ingredient to the debt buster plan is to remain on the program at all times. Keep an eye on your spending and remember the consequences of any extra spending you might do. Keeping to a spending plan will help the most but we are all weak at times and enjoy spending - so stop it totally or keep it to a minimum.