Your finances are a mess and you know it. It keeps you up at night and has you so worried you’re willing to do anything you can to clean them up. But you’re not even sure what to do first. You have credit card debt, zero savings, and you’ve never set up a retirement account. You’re starting from square one.

If this sounds like you, don’t worry. We’ll get you on the path to financial freedom. But you have to be willing to put in the work and make some sacrifices along the way.

Here are the steps you should take to get there.

Start An Emergency Fund

If you have no savings at all, you’re living paycheck to paycheck. Many Americans do, but it’s a scary place to be. You need to get a bare minimum set up in a savings account. You should shoot for at least $1,000 to begin with.

That can seem like a crazy amount to save up when you’re starting from nothing. But there are several ways to get there.

First off, if your company lets you, ask to pick up a few overtime hours. Make sure you only use that money for your savings, not for extra spending.

If you can’t get any extra hours, you might want to think about getting a part-time job for a while. I know it’s not fun to work all day at your full-time job and then spend a couple evenings working more, but it will help you breeze through your emergency fund. With a part-time job, you can fund the first thousand in a couple of months.

If you don’t want to work extra, you’re going to have to make cuts. The easiest place to do that is usually in food spending.

Hammer At That Credit Card Debt

Once your emergency fund is in place and you’ve committed not to touch it for anything other than emergencies, you should start chipping away at your credit card debt. That can take a long time depending on how much you have and how devoted you are to tackling it.

You might need to sell some of your stuff, continue on with your part-time job, or make steep cuts to your budget to clear it up. It might take months or it might take years, but you’ll feel so happy every time you get that statement and see the amount lowering.

Start Your Retirement Account

Some experts will tell you to clear up your credit card debt before you open a retirement account. But you don’t want to put your retirement savings on hold indefinitely. If you struggle with clearing up that debt, you don’t want to lose years when you could have been saving for your retirement.

Here’s what you can do instead. Take a month or two to get a good start on that credit card debt before opening a retirement account. That will at least give you the confidence to know that you can do it when you see the balance dropping.

Then open a 401k at work and put in at least enough to take advantage of all the matching money your company offers. If you don’t, you’ll be leaving money on the table.