I asked an educator if I could bring this topic up and I was told that it opens the site up to possible unscrupulous individuals that would take advantage of people suffering with money troubles. Well since you started the topic, I am going to throw my two cents in. One thing that can be done is if you have a high credit card balance but own your house you can get I line of credit on your house for  about 3.25%. Then you pay off all your credit cards at 21% and pay the line of credit off. The most important point here is to put away your credit cards and live on what you have.

How to plan for what you have, you should make a budget out and put down all your expenses in a month that include everything you pay for in a year. For example, property taxes if you own a home and dental care all the things you do not think about but end up paying money. Then you look at what is coming in terms of income. If your income matches, you total expenses for the year then you are ok, but one thing you should do I set aside an envelope for  every expense and how much you need to put in each month for each expense. Again, property taxes will serve as an example you may pay them all at once or as the municipality gives you a payment schedule. Every month you put in the amount needed to pay your property taxes when it comes time to paying them, you will have accumulated enough in the envelope to pay them that way no surprises.

Then with other expenses like food, you calculate how much you have to spend in a month say it $600.00. This is where thing start to become tough $600.00 may be enough to live on but it does not but you the things you like to eat. So try to stay as healthy as possible and say cut out the pop or wine expense you can always drink water.

You have to prioritize your expenses, so having a roof over your head and eating and all the expense that go with each seem to be a good place to start. Then you may have to be a Scrooge this year and not spend as much on Christmas presents, remember in Who Ville Christmas till came without the presents.

You should also put an envelope away for things that you are not preparing for there is always these types of expenses, especially if you own a home. You may get water in the basement, or other unexpected expense may come up.

In the end you have reduced your credit to as low as possible and have an envelope for everything that you spend money on in a year. You have prioritized your expenses so that you can meet you yearly expense with what is currently income that is coming in.

If things are bad, consider using the food bank as a possible resource to cut down on expenses, however you have to prove that you are paying a certain percentage of you income on a place to rent. There is no shame I going for help where it is.

Also, consider if you have two cars and only one person is working if you need the extra car right now. Or if you have one car and it is easy to get to work on transit you may want to just put the car aside for now and keep it if you can but stop paying insurance on it and all the other fun things like gas (got to love that HST).

If you are both out of work or you are on your own and you are on this site because you have agoraphobia consider applying for ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Program). You have to meet certain criteria to get ODSP such as a needs assessment and asset test. In other words, you can only have $5,000 to your name and have no income coming in or RRSP to cash in or many other assets. However, you can have a home and a car, which are exempt under assets. For one person you are likely to get about $1000.00 a month which $464 is for your home and the remaining is for basic needs like food.  You also have to be disabled enough that you cannot get a job. However, again you can work when you are on ODSP but they reduce your payments to you by 50 % of what you made in that month. I could go on forever, but you will need to look in to this yourself and see if you meet the standards assets test, income test and being disabled enough. You can look into this by Goggle Ontario Disability Support Program Income Support Directives for information about the whole program.

Another thing to consider is if you are on this site and sufficiently disabled enough to be agoraphobic you may want to apply for the Disability Tax Credit. This is a harder thing to get because it requires significantly more disability then ODSP. Such as not able to do basic daily activities, however if you are agoraphobic you may qualify because you unable to leave the house. You or your spouse can use this tax credit and you can go back 10 years if you have been suffering that long and re-file tax returns to get money back. I cannot tell you how to go about this because as the educator said someone could con you into paying them to get this tax credit and not deliver. I suggest you look up the Disability Tax Credit forms and see if you are eligible for it. I warn you know that there are sites on the internet that will do all the work for you but they want 30% of whatever they get for you and you lose $25 if nothing happens. My suggestion is that you look into it yourself first and if you think you are eligible then consult an accountant with a designation and have him or her re-file your tax return for you if you can get the disability tax credit. One final point is that you have to been disabled for ten years to go back ten years, but if you meet the requirements it can mean a significant tax reduction for your spouse because he or she can claim the disability tax credit and others if you cannot because you do not have enough income this year. I recommend that you not take my or anyone’s advice on this but do some homework and get a qualified person to do what need to be done. That means someone who is qualified about what disabilities are eligible for this credit becuase common law has extended some of the definitions on what constitutes a disability. Such as, the government says you have to disabled enough that you cannot cloth yourself. However, the courts extended this definition to mean, that to cloth yourself, you have to be able to do the laundry, this you will not find on any definition the government has on disabilities that qualify. I will not anwser any question on this thread as I said invesigate for yourself and get help if you need it from someone who is qualified.