Rollercoaster of Debt

I admire all of the PF Bloggers out there who have their finances under control and share with the rest of us their savings' goals and the methods by which they are achieving them. Starting this blog has helped me immeasurably to keep focused on our own financial morass and work to get us out of debt. (Oh, that will be a day to celebrate!)

Most days I feel hopeful and optimistic, but once in a while dread and doom creep up on me (usually when I am trying to go to sleep, or else at 4 a.m., when my eyes snap open and my heart starts racing). April 15th is fast approaching and we are not receiving a refund. I spent the morning trying to predict when our clients' payments will arrive, and if everyone pays on time, we will be fine. Still, everyday, I struggle to decide who to pay and who not to pay based on who slaps us with the largest late fees and who permits us a small grace-period window. Our problem is not only debt, but cash flow. If today we received every cent in our A/R, all of our A/P would be current. But that is not going to happen, so I have to play the shell game.

I have so many simultaneous goals that I am easily, and almost always nearly, overwhelmed. Do I focus solely on debt reduction or do I put a little something away in savings? (I chose the latter yesterday when I set up an automatic deposit of $49 a week to our HSBC Direct savings account.) Should we forget about buying a house and just rent a place for the next year? Why am I thinking about retirement planning when we're barely scraping by?

I know the answer: I have to think big and small at the same time. I have to account for and allocate every penny that we receive while keeping the big picture in mind, no matter how distant it may seem. We will get out of debt. We will own our own home. We will continue to grow this business and our savings. We will enjoy life.