you are dealing with many little crises. so every day one of them is going to strike at you. i encourage you to create and maintain a spreadsheet that shows balance, interest rate, last minimum payment and date due. you will need something like this to make decisions.

credit is the kind of thing that can smooth out your husband’s sporadic pay situation, except when you run out of credit, as has happened to you. and his recent experience with a bounced check is terrible, of course.

i went pretty far into debt, and i came out of it. the experience helped me develop fiscal discipline. it sounds like you’re just becoming aware off the scope of your challenge. at this point i enocourage you to develop one spreadsheet (GMail has one, or Microsoft sells Excel) that describes all of your debt in one place. That will be your command center. And yes, stop using credit. Even debit could be a problem because it might bounce your checks. It’s time for cash allowances.