It’s the beginning of the year and many of us are starting to take stock of our finances. For those of us who are shocked to find that we’ve racked up massive debt over the past few months

More: Five Quick Tips to Start You on the Path to Personal Debt Relief

In our Repost Series, we re-publish classic posts from our archives. We thought this post, first published in April 2008, was an interesting topic to bring back for discussion.

Open your purse. Do you have such a wide variety of department store credit cards that sifting through your wallet is like reading a mall directory? Are there so many Visa, MasterCard, AmEx, and Discover cards that you have to sort them chronologically according to expiration dates? If so, it just might be time to cut down on some of your credit accounts and do some consolidation.

Why consolidate? When you’re trying to pay your bills down, sometimes it’s just easier to do it if there aren’t so many bills due throughout the month. When you can concentrate on one or two payments per month instead of several payments – no matter how small – it becomes easier to attack the debt. So how should you go about consolidating? It’s pretty easy:

More: How to Consolidate Your Debt

The Budget Fashionista’s Annual “Being Broke Ain’t Cute” Series features tips and advice to help you improve your personal financial health. For more personal finance information, please visit our Financial Health Series.

1. Develop a Signature Piece. This is the piece you’re going to be known for—sort of like your calling card. It could be fabulous shoes, earrings, blazer, dresses, etc. Focus your shopping dollars on these pieces. My signature piece is crazy necklaces, which I find at thrift stores and stores like Forever 21.

2.  Use the Cost per Wear When Shopping. Frequent TBF readers know this is something I’ve been preaching for years. Value is the key when building a great closet and The Budget Fashionista’s cost per wear formula can help you get the most bang for your buck. The cost per wear is the price of an item/divided by the number of times you think you’ll wear it. So if an item costs $100, and you wear it ten times, the cost per wear is $10. The more you wear an item, the cheaper it becomes. This tip is especially important as it forces you to focus on the utility of an item, ie the usefulness of an item to you, rather than just the price. Paying $5 for something you never where is $5 wasted.

3. Limit Trips to the Dry Cleaners. This is a real money zapper, even for yours truly, until I learned, and this may come as a shock, that you’re only suppose to dry clean your suits two to three times per year and even less for items like coats. So how do you keep it fresh in the meantime? Spritz it with a bit of fabric freshener like Febreze.

4. Learn to Sew. Okay, I don’t mean learn how to create amazing pieces ala ‘Project Runway’, but learning how to hem your own pants, fix slight holes, and other minor alterations will not only save you money, but also save your garments.

5. Follow the 70/30 Rule. 70 percent of your closet should be classic pieces that never go out of style, a great white shirt from Old Navy or even a nice black suit that you can wear over and over again. The other 30 percent should be fun trendy items like a plaid skirt, funky bomber jacket, or a cool fedora.

More: Repost: Recession Proofing Your Closet This Fall

What: The economy is, well, challenging this back school season, and some moms are cutting back on their spending according to a survey by Buy.com

Buy.com Says: According to a new survey by Buy.com, 40 percent of moms are planning to buy the minimum for back-to-school, citing that, “It’s a tough economy and I’m spending less.”

More: Back to School 2011: Moms are Going Even More Budget