Why do you save for your nieces and nephews when you are drowning in your own debt? Paying for distant relatives' schooling is a luxury reserved for those with positive net worth.

When you realize you are in a hole - Stop digging… I agree that if you are drowning in debt, forget about helping nephews and nieces and concentrate on getting your own house in order… Just how dire your situation actually is depends in large part on the nature of your debt. If it’s in an investment like a home or a college education that will lead to a better career then you gained something of great future value in exchange for your debt. On the other hand, especially if it’s credit card debt for things you won’t have in a year, then you are screwed and it’s going to be a difficult climb… I get it, we have all been in debt and it’s not easy making ends meet now and paying your debts. It can create a terrible cycle in which you pay your monthly payments and then live in your credit card ensuring you will never be debt free. I also started off with student loans and even with an engineer’s salary I paid for about as long as I had been in college. Shit happens and sometimes it’s truly unavoidable. But many times we do it to ourselves… OP, the beginning of a solution is to realize there is a problem - You are now there. The next step is to own the problem and figure out realistically how you are going to address the problem. The longer it took for the problem to build up, the longer it will take to solve it. You aren’t going to win the lottery and you cannot depend on anyone else to make the problem go away - You will have to deal with the problem yourself. You have my sympathy, most of us have been where you are now at some point in our life.

get on a tight written budget, don't step food to any fast food restaurants unless you work there, cut all extra subscriptions you can, sell the car if you owe on it and pay cash for a beater, take all the savings except $1,000 and put it all on debt smallest to largest. attack the smallest. pay minimum on the rest. once the smallest is paid off use that money to attack next debt. that's how I paid off 185k in 4 years. I sold everything