I recently took control of my mom's finances. She has a, shall we say, poor history of making payments on time, and was living pretty much paycheck to paycheck while falling further behind in her financial obligations. Various creditors were making regular phone calls and there was probably a "past-due" notice in the mail at least twice a week.

The hardest part for her is that she shops a lot. I think it fills a psychological need for her, especially because she's always on a quest for The Perfect Purse or The Perfect Notebook. I've looked into Debtors Anonymous, but there aren't any local chapters, and I'm not ready to talk to her about it yet. I don't even know if that's really something that fits her situation. What I was ready to do, though, is get her back on track, creditors paid off, and monthly payments made on time. She told me that she's very happy I'm in charge of this stuff and that she's surprised she has extra money because usually she would go spend her paycheck first, THEN look at who needed to be paid. Parents, sheesh....

So far, we've paid down an impressive list of 9 various creditors (outstanding medical bills, property taxes, tickets, and a final bill from a phone service we canceled for her), totaling about $800. Still left is a $1610 bill to be paid, and I'm thinking of just sending them the extra money at the end of the month, to slowly whittle that away. They don't charge interest or late fees, so it's a somewhat low priority right now compared to making sure the other monthly things that DO charge fees and interest are paid.

She no longer has the mortgage company calling every day looking for their money, because they're current. We were also able to lower her cell phone plan to cut about twenty bucks a month out, as well as disconnecting the home phone and internet that rarely got used. Most the rest of the monthly bills are things we can't reduce or remove, like car and house payments, insurance, and the like.

She also has been cleaning out her house, which I think has a big psychological benefit to it, as well as monetary. She's taking the things she doesn't need anymore to a consignment shop where she'll hopefully get a decent amount of money back from them. Everything else goes to the trash or to charity, and slowly but surely she's getting the house looking good. Eventually I'll have to go get all my extra crap out of my old bedroom, but that's one task I'm sure not looking forward to :)