Battered by a global financial crisis and the threat of job losses, Canadians are starting to worry about debt. Paying down debt was named a top priority by Canadians in a recent Harris/Decima poll conducted by CIBC, edging out retirement planning and day-to-day spending and budgeting on their priorities list.
 

If you're one of those who want to end 2011 with less debt than you started with, here are our top five financial tips to help you:
 

1. Sharpen your pencil - write a list of everything you spend, what you owe and the value of such assets as your home and car. It's much easier to con yourself about how you're doing financially if you don't see it in black and white. It's particularly easy to be lulled by rising real estate prices and low interest rates into thinking your finances are improving, when you may be draining your equity by running up debt faster than your home can appreciate or your loan payments can pay down. The bottom line - what you are worth compared to what you owe should have improved from January 2010 to now, not declined.
 

2. The difference, it's said, between a goal and a dream is writing it down. Don't just dream your dreams, write down your goals and establish a plan to realize them. 'I'd love to spend the summer in the south of France,' may sound great but if you haven't made a plan to save the money, find the most affordable fare and maybe even arrange a house exchange, you're still going to be sitting at home dreaming about it come July.
 

3.  Don't spend more than you make. That sounds so simple but it's the one step that eludes many people. It's too easy to rack up spending on credit cards or live in your overdraft, convincing yourself you'll catch up next pay cheque. Instead of divvying cash into envelopes on payday to categorize your spending, try using electronic bank accounts into digital envelopes. Name them - groceries, travel, clothes, and rainy day savings -- whatever breakdown works best for your budget. When your clothing account is empty, no stealing from groceries to fuel a January sales shopping spree.
 

4. Freeze your credit cards. Literally. If you're one of those conscientious and organized folks who put everything on a credit card to earn airline miles for the trip to the south of France and religiously pay off your card every month, you can stop reading now. For the rest of you -- we know this is hard medicine when you're likely suffering a post-Christmas credit card hangover -- but don't use your credit cards. One of the most effective ways of making you think twice before buying something you really don't have money for is to put your credit card in a bag of water in your freezer. By the time you've melted the ice to get at it, hopefully sober second thought will have convinced you that the purchase is a want, not a need.
 

5. Take care of the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves. You may not save enough to buy a condo in Whistler by returning empties and resisting the latte every morning but much of the money we spend simply seems to disappear through a hole in our pockets. Have you checked you cable bill lately? Are you paying more than your neighbor? And that latte? Five days a week at four or five bucks for a fancy coffee could add up to a plane ticket or weekend getaway after a few months. Sometimes when we say we can't afford to do something, it just means we're not prepared to sacrifice something else to make it happen. Think about what you really want in 2011 and what you can do to make it happen.