Which bills are more important?

[ravenswrld]

I just found out I will be getting a layoff notice from my company. Like many families in America, my husband and I rely on both our incomes to pay our bills, credit cards, car payments and mortgage on our house, which we bought a year and a half ago. With out my current level of pay we can can not pay all our bills, especially if I am not able to find a new job. We need to know which is better, keeping up on our car payments, credit card bills and other bills and trying to sell the house or just let it go? Or is it better to let everything else go, try to keep up on the mortgage payments, but potentially facing loosing the house in the end anyway?

[snailrancher]

Sorry to hear you are losing your job. I don't know how much help my answer will be as the US system is probably very different to ours, but my Husband and I faced the same problem when we had a small baby. We prioritised putting food on the table, making sure we had a car so that we could still get to work, and fuel (i.e. gas and electricity). We made agreements with all our credit card providers to pay them what we could afford and most of them stopped charging us interest. We ended up losing our home, but were housed by our local authority. I'd suggest you find out what help you would get if you lost your house. Selling it could be an option, but it depends on your housing market, and how quickly you could sell it. Good luck.