Let's look at tried and true ways to manage your debt that won't leave you scrambling to meet unrealistic goals. Perhaps the most important component of debt consolidation is canvassing your cash flow system to determine where you are losing money, how much your money you are losing per month, at what rates you are losing that money, and how your spending habits have evolved over the past six months to two years.

Debt consolidation experts can help you with the accounting. But doing a budget is essential to any debt consolidation mandate. In other words, until you name the problems you have, you won't be able to identify discrete solutions that can fit neatly with your financial goals. Of course, debt consolidation is complicated because most individuals lead somewhat unpredictable lives.

Even married couples on fixed incomes with few debts and numerous assets can get into financial troubles, since the tumultuous economy continues to evolve around them. Interest rates go up, impacting mortgage payments, which in turn impact monthly budgets, for instance.

The way to deal with this constant economic change is to create a budget that's flexible enough to allow you a degree of debt consolidation and yet provide enough “free cash” in your accounts to let you reach your goals comfortably.

In other words, you can't budget out every dollar you spend (under most circumstances), since the time cost benefit of doing so generally doesn't make sense. For instance, if you spend 30 hours every month figuring out what you spend down to the penny, you are likely wasting at least a dozen hours that you could otherwise be using to work (and thus earn more money), invest (and thus make your money work harder), or simply have fun.

Another debt consolidation idea is to draft a savings plan that will slowly accumulate an emergency fund for you and your family. Budget experts recommend that this fund should store up at least six month's worth of living expenses, but don't try to sock away all that money at once. Allocate a certain amount of cash in your budget per month for your emergency plan, and protect that money from your general spending accounts. And finally, look into a debt consolidation loan to help you reduce reliance on expensive creditor loans and simplify the planning process.