I'm in debt and looking for some debt advice. Right now, I'm still keeping up with my repayments, but I can see that's not going to last for long.

The thing is, I'm still using my credit cards and I can't really see a way I can stop doing that. I really want to start getting rid of that debt, but every month it's creeping up as I'm using them for things like petrol and food.

It used to be just for convenience sake, but these days I find that I'm pretty much forced to use them just to stay on top of my day-to-day spending - and that means my debt is just getting bigger every month.

I'm wondering if it's worth consolidating those debts with a loan, or whether I should apply for a balance transfer to a new card. I know that each option has good points and bad points - you can read all about it on the web, but I'm not sure which one would actually be better for me. What I need is some one-to-one debt advice from someone who really knows what they're talking about.

Anyway, I was talking to one of my friends and he reckons I should just talk to an adviser. He was facing debt problems of his own a few years ago and it all started turning around when he got some help figuring out what to do about his debts.

He ended up consolidating them with a loan, but he warned me that that doesn't mean it's the right way for me to go. I really want to talk to an expert and get their take on what I should do in my own situation. That doesn't mean I'm definitely going to go with what they recommend, but it should mean I'll be a lot better informed about where I can go from here.