Dealing With a Family Budget Deficit - When You Can't Pay Everything By Bruce Guzman Platinum Quality Author

If you find yourself in a situation where you've cut your budget to the absolute bare minimum and yet you can't pay all of your debts and living expenses, you're going to have to make some tough decisions.

Here are three tips for prioritizing who / what you'll pay:

Absolutely Essential Living Expenses

These expenses will need to be at the very top of your "bills to pay" list. These include food, housing, utilities, and keeping gas in your car so you can get to work. Needless to say, you need to make sure that these essential expenses have been reduced as much as possible.

Secured Debts

Next, you will want to pay secured debts at the top of the "bills to pay" list as well. Some secured debt - such as your home and car - are just as important as your essential living expenses.

Certain Unsecured Debts

There are some unsecured debts that you'll need to put in the "bills to pay" list as well. Some of these include Child Support, along with Federal & State income taxes.

You may not be familiar with secured and unsecured debts. Any debt that has collateral associated with it is a secured debt. Things like a house, a car, a boat or a motorcycle would fit into this category. If you stop paying long enough on a secured loan, you'll likely have the time that you purchased repossessed because it is the collateral that was used to secure the loan.

Conversely, unsecured debt is debt that doesn't have any collateral associated with it. Debts such as credit card debt fall into this category. If you don't make your credit card payments, they can't come and take an asset of yours to satisfy the debt. What they can do is to turn your account over to a collection agency in order to try and get the funds that you owe them. If you still don't pay, the creditor could take you to court in order to get a court order to collect what you still owe them. The creditor could ask for the court's permission to do one of three things:

• Seize one of your assets
• Put a lien on an asset so that you will be unable to borrow against it (such as a home) or sell it without paying off your debt to them.
• Garnish - or take a part of your wages - each pay period until the debt is satisfied. This is illegal in some states, but in states that it is legal, it can be a very effective tool

Bruce has been helping folks with personal finance issues for several years. He started writing about them online in 2008. In addition to his writing, Bruce also operates a number of informative web sites. You can check out his latest website here: Toys For Dogs featuring Dog Chew Toys