Your Debt on One Page

In your head debt is one anxious blur. On paper it turns out to be five lines you can actually work with.

Take a sheet and give every debt its own line: who, how much is left, the annual rate, the next due date, the minimum payment. Count all of it — the bank, the credit card, the store instalments, buy-now-pay-later, money borrowed from your parents and from a friend, unpaid tax, a fine. Open the apps, the contracts and the letters instead of writing from memory: from memory the total always comes out smaller. Add the column up and write the total at the bottom in big figures. Put a star next to the line with the highest rate — that one is dealt with first, not the biggest one. Do not file the sheet away; leave it where you will see it tomorrow.

The total will most likely be bigger than what you carried in your head, and the first few minutes will feel bad. That is a normal reaction to an exact figure, not proof that things are hopeless — vagueness frightens people more than a number does. Do not build a plan for the whole sum today; leave the sheet in sight and tomorrow look only at the starred line. If you could not get all the data (no access to an old contract, no memory of the balance), write «don't know» on that line and request a statement — «don't know» is an honest line too. What changed once the sum stopped being approximate?