Which Bills Need to be Paid First?

Over the winter months I am falling behind on my bills due to very high heating costs.  I know I will be able to catch up in the summer and hopefully plan better for next year.  In the meantime, I am wondering which bills can I get away with setting aside for a couple of months?

So far, I am paying my mortgages and minimum payments on credit cards.

I do not have car payments but I do have these other bills:

house insurance, car insurance, real estate taxes, water bills, gas, electric, oil, phone, minor dr bills.

I'm not sure what these comapnies shut off dates are. What you might want to try is figuring out how much you can pay on each, even if it's only a little. Call each company and explain your situation and ask if they will accept a partial payment until you are able to start paying them in full again. They would much rather you work with them than not. There may also be hardship programs that you might qualify for.

Look at each bill and expense that comes into your household and see if there's a way to trim back on the usage or switch to a cheaper plan. Shorter showers, dial down the thermostat, cheaper phone plan, look at your car insurance for more competative rates, eliminate unecessary driving, consolidate shopping trips, cut coupons, watch and purchase food from the sale ads.

Later on you might also want to consider looking into another heat source, maybe a wood burner. It's my understanding oil is the highest cost fuel to heat a home.

In the state of Michigan it takes three years of being deliquent on a particular tax year before the state forecloses.

I was in a similar situation to you last winter. I looked into a wood burner and it really did cut my heating bill down quite a lot (and I learned to compact newspapers from family & neighbors down into long-burning wood-replacement too)

The other things I did were similar to what tmostuff suggested - tried to find other ways to cut down expenses so the other bills aren't left behind.

Think about what you do spend now and consider what you could cut down on if you had to.

Did you know just shutting off the TV/Video/DVD/Computer at the wall could save you quite a bit in electric bills each year?

why do you have car insurance ,when you have no car? i say pay these first:

water bills, gas, electric, and phone