<prompt> Human: I feel like an idiot for having gotten myself into this position. Im the primary breadwinner for a family of four. A few years ago my husband was laid off from his 70,000year job and was out of work getting unemployment for almost two years. During that time, we used our home equity line of credit as a bank account to help make ends meet, and we had already been dipping into that over the years to help pay for my twins daycare and other expenses. He is now working at a job that pays much less about 50Kyear. While we have a 15-year-mortgage that will be paid off in 3 years, we have almost 160,000 in our Home Equity line of credit to still pay off. And two daughters going off to college in three years. Here are my monthly bills:Mortgage: 2,133Home equity: 370 I pay 500 each monthElectric: 196.20Car insurance for two cars: 273Disability insurance: 51Life insurance: 213Phone plan for four: 230Car lease: 200Braces for two: 250Cable: 124Pet insurance: 43New stove payments - 100Gym membership - 35Gym fee for husband to train clients there: 300Pet food: 100Dry cleaners: 100Groceries: 600Im embarrassed to even write down what I have on credit cards - its so shameful to me that I have so much revolving debt. But here goes:12,811 on a Discover Card I pay 270 per month, 30 more than the minimum and havent used it in nearly a year10,900 on American Express I pay 250 per month467 on Citibank MasterCard 50 per month.My take home pay is 7,430 per month.My husbands pay varies since hes a trainer and in business for himself, but is roughly between 2,000 and 3,000 per month.My sister in law used to live with us and pay 900 per month in rent, but shes been gone for a few months and were feeling the loss of that income.I am disgusted with myself for earning so much money and yet racking up so much debt that its burying me. I do have other skills and could get some extra part time work as a professional writer if I worked at it. I think I may need to.Appreciate straightforward advice on how to dig myself out of this. I feel crushed and poor and embarrassed about where my finances are today. Thanks in advance for reading this and for any advice.Assistant: If you havent already, you should refinance your mortgage under the HARP program before rate jump up again. You can severely lower that mortgage payment depending on your current rate. You could also extend it if youre looking to have a lower payment immediately, but it will also start your amortization schedule over again and youll be paying pretty much all interest for the first few years. Human: Our mortgage is already at a pretty low rate for a 15-year-mortgage around 5 percent, so I dont think that would help. I never thought about extending it, but Id hate to do that if I dont have to. Id rather work on bringing in more income if I can. Thanks.  <response>: 5 for a 15 year fixed is really high. I just plugged some info into BankRate and it seems banks are offering 15 yr refinance loans for around 3.125 these days. Depending on how much you have left on the loan, you might save a lot of money by dropping your interest rate that much. 