Need a little guidance

[Synacle1]

For the last few years I've been the dreaded guy on the other end of the phone. Yep I was a manager at a collection agency. After becoming just as frustrated with my work as the people I called I decided to make a change and quit. In doing so I took a job that pays 1/3 of my old salary and have decided to go back to school to pursue a different career path.

In doing so I crippled myself financially. I'm past due on multiple debts and am trying to work on Dave Ramsey's style money makover. Problem is after working for the agency I went into default on some of my debts while changing my lifestyle to lower my expenses. In other words while trying to liquidate my assets and adjust to a lower income lifestyle I got behind on a few debts. What should be a priority here for me? I've finally got myself into a proper budget to allow for more than minimum monthly payments on my upto date debts but I have older debt going to collections that I'm not making payments on. There is no minimum required payment or interest on these debts so should they be placed last on my list of priorities or should they be tackled by sending out my own version of a monthly payment on a snowball style program?

Any Ideas would be appreciated. I guess I'm too bust looking at the HUGE picture because I can't seem to concentrate on the smaller parts.

[sweeps]

Re: Need a little guidance

What kind of debts are we talking about here? Credit card bills, car loans, mortgage, student loans, home equity loans, etc.?

The first consideration is whether the debt is secured or unsecured. If you don't pay your mortgage and/or home equity loan, for example, you lose your house. Secured loans should be a priority.

[marglo]

Re: Need a little guidance

My advice is to focus on one thing at a time. I believe this is also the way DR teaches. I would get myself current on my debts ...even if thre is not a minimum payment required, I would send what I would expect the amount to me. Once I was current, then I would use any extra funds to build up a EF to $1000, then after that I would start snowballing my debt.