Okay. Take a moment and try not to panic. (We know that can be hard.)

The first thing we recommend is taking a quick money health-check, which the Quids in! Future-Proof Your Finances Test can take us through. It’s a list of simple yes/no questions to help us identify anything we might try to keep costs down and income up. At the end, it explains why it’s good to try the things we don’t yet have in place and offers some guidance on where to start.

We might be able to save money somewhere but there could also be extra income we can get hold of, like emergency benefits or grants. Are you in East London, Gloucestershire or Bath & North East Somerset? If so, you can call your local Quids In Centre who will be happy to go through the money health-check with you. The Centres are run by Clean Slate.

Usually, the first four steps for protecting ourselves against debt is to:
1) List our income and all our outgoings to see how short we might be
2) Look at what can be cut or where extra cash could come in
3) Contact any companies, landlords or official bodies we owe money to and explain the situation and ask them to help
4) Contact Stepchange Debt Charity or National Debtline if we feel we’re unable to keep on top of debts.

See our Useful Links page here.