<prompt> Human: First, would like to thank you guys for all your comments and observations. The ones who told me that I have a spending problem were right on target. A good friend of mine and his wife told me they were doing Dave Ramseys Financial Peace University, and they lent us the DVDs and other materials. What we didnt have was the workbook but we have been able to make do without that for now. Both my wife and I sat down and worked out a budget, we have been tweaking it over the first month, and we really pulled back on our spending that we were doing.We cancelled almost every subscription that we had going to credit cards, and those we thought we needed were pointed to our debit card. This freed up about 175.00 a month in extra money. Of the subscriptions we kept were a 1.99month for a shared iCloud account for extra storage so that our phones and tablets are fully backed up.I have been going through bills and figuring out ways we can save. We are using our home AC less on warmer days and when we do we have it set to 79 vs 75. I went through our phone bill and we have cut down on the shared data plans, and I am moving members off to MintMobile which is paid in 3 month increments. This will save us about 150.00mo on cell phones. We have a budget and we are sticking to it. We budget 600mo for our family of 6 and we are 75.00 ahead of budget on that due to the family being more intentional toward our food purchases and making sure we are eating left overs. I am shopping loss leaders, and looking at food ads for good deals so we can freeze meat, but have also started making more of our foods I actually love to cookBecause of the budgeting and watching what we spend we are now finding ourselves with a good amount per month around 300.00mo to put towards bills. I am looking at a part time job to take for 15-20 hours a week to help get the debt killed, but nothing has panned out as of yet. I am now selling off the old computer stock that I had from my consulting company and putting it on craigslist, nextdoor, and letgo in order to put that money toward the debt. I also am advertising my consulting services so that I can pick up extra bucks there. Thank you all for your advice. While I usually get a bit put off by people using bible quotes to support their ideas I have found that Dave Ramsey is one of the few that uses them in context and I see the wisdom borne out of proverbs such as:The borrower is a slave to the lenderAnd while proverbs 6:1 talks about your neighbors debts, it also can be read back at yourself. Because if you are indeed in debt and you have signed pledges for that debt, then you are now a slave to the debt holder. I dont want to be that slave anymore. Again Thanks. You really helped me out here. We decided to forgo the consolidation loan for the time being and see what we can do with our budgeting and sidegigs to knock it out.  <response>: Im glad to read that things are improving. Keep up the good work! Dont forget to celebrate milestones, like for example reaching the 1k emergency fund or paying off 1k of debt, etc. Of course those shouldnt be expensive celebrations, but they can still be happy ones and help you stick with this. 